


we'll light your way

by thisstableground



Series: less than ninety degrees [4]
Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism, Character Study, Family, Fluff, Let Ruben Be Happy, Multi, Multimedia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2018-10-25 21:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 69,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10772532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: One-shots and tumblr prompts set in theless than ninety degreesverse. in no kind of chronological order.Latest: 23. just some foolin' around and some conversation the day after their first time





	1. la mañana siguiente

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: still So Into This Ship, still have no idea why any of you are along for the ride, still thrilled to have you with me. if you follow me on tumblr you'll know that i have no self-restraint whenever i get an ask about a headcanon or a possible prompt, and my answers always turn into sort-of-fics. they're all kinda messy because they're off the top of my head, so here's where all the edited, jazzed-up versions will live.
> 
> title is from carolina by ben gibbard.]
> 
> [a/n 2: i've had to do some timeline-fudging so that things line up - i'm sticking as close as possible to canon characterisation and all, but just the times in people's lives when things happened or their ages might be altered.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: pure fluff, set the morning after [ your body is a triangle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10716456/chapters/23742423). this one not actually much different from the tumblr version because i'd already edited with the intention to post here. rated T for mild sexy-talk.]

The first thing Ruben notices when he wakes up is that he’s naked, and that he’s not alone. He barely has time to tense up before Usnavi and Vanessa are both talking to him, quietly reassuring him that it’s just them and he’s in Usnavi’s apartment and he’s safe.  
  
Okay. Oh, shit, okay, _last night_. His head is on Usnavi’s chest, Vanessa is curled around him at the back. Ruben’s never even stayed at someone else’s place like this, what’s the etiquette on waking up in bed with a _couple_ you just fucked?  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
“Hey there,” says Usnavi.  
  
“Hi,” says Ruben, blinking hard to clear the morning tiredness away. “Hey, Vanessa.”  
  
“Aite, Ruben,” she says. They don’t seem in a hurry to get rid of him. In fact, Vanessa’s kissing the back of his neck and Usnavi is brushing light fingers across Ruben’s lips, barely touching. Maybe last night really  _wasn’t_ a one time thing.  
  
Ruben has no problem with that.  
  
The blinds are down but the light creeping through is far brighter than the dim pre-sunrise it usually is when he gets up. He shifts round to try and see the clock. Now free from Ruben's sleeping weight, Usnavi pushes himself up to sit, cracking his shoulder with a groan and wiggling his fingers to get feeling back into the arm Ruben was lying on.  
  
“Usnavi, it’s eight am, you should be at work! _And_ I was giving you a dead arm. Why didn’t you wake me up?”  
  
“I’m taking the morning off. Called in Sonny to let him know he’ll be opening, he’s on shift at eight thirty.”  
  
“Really? But you never open the store late.”  
  
“You just looked. Happy,” says Usnavi. “Didn’t wanna disturb you.”  
  
_He’s so_ ** _cute_** , Ruben thinks helplessly. It’s almost unbearable.  
  
“I can go, if you needed to - ah!” Ruben sits up properly, then immediately lies back down again. “Nope, NOPE. Scratch that, not going anywhere.  _Ow."_  
  
“Aw, poor baby,” coos Vanessa. “Did you work too hard last night?”  
  
“My entire _life_ hurts,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, what else is new?” says Usnavi, stroking Ruben’s hair with a worried look. “I didn’t like…actually hurt you, did I? I tried to be careful.”  
  
“No, no, it’s the good kind,” assures Ruben. “Like, post-gym kind of hurt. Probably. I’ve only been in a gym once for like ten minutes, but I’ve heard stories.”  
  
“Why were you in a gym for _ten minutes_? Were you lost?”  
  
“There were mirrors _everywhere_. Ten minutes is my limit on how long I can stand to look at my reflection on a treadmill, turns out. Who ever wanted to know what they look like while they’re running? Still paid membership for the next seven months, though.” He stretches out blissfully then rolls over to rest his head on Usnavi’s thigh. “Coffee would be great, thanks.”  
  
“I didn’t offer.”  
  
“I’m reading between the lines,” Ruben says. “Vanessa wants coffee too.”  
  
“Oh, Vanessa really does,” she agrees. “Thanks, Usnavi!”  
  
_“Thanks Usnavi_ nothin’, I wanna stay in bed as well! Why doesn’t Vanessa get the coffee?”  
  
“Because nobody wants that to happen,” says Vanessa.  
  
“Fair enough. Why doesn’t _Ruben_ get the coffee?”  
  
“Because Ruben can’t stand up,” says Ruben, looking up at Usnavi as pathetically as possible. “You broke me by being too good at sex, now you gotta play barista. Anyway, what’s even the point of _café_ if you’re not the one making it?”  
  
“Flattery gets you everywhere,” says Usnavi. “You’re gonna be a problem, I can tell. Already learning all my weaknesses.”  
  
“Usnavi’s weaknesses: number one, compliments about his coffee, number two, compliments about his dick,” Vanessa lists, tapping the appropriate number of fingers against Ruben’s shoulder as she does. “In that order. Three, videos of animals being friends with each other. Sometimes he cries at them, it’s adorable.”  
  
“Vanessa, don’t _tell_ him that! Whose side are you on?”  
  
“Found out some interesting ones last night, too,” says Ruben. “Like…four, Ruben talking about touching himself.”  
  
Usnavi makes a strangled noise and turns bright red. “ _Dude_.”  
  
“Am I wrong?” Ruben asks in a low voice, skimming a hand high up the inside of Usnavi’s thigh.  
  
Usnavi closes his eyes and lets his head tip back to rest against the wall. “Mm. No.”  
  
Ruben pulls his hand away and huddles further back into Vanessa’s arms with an exaggerated yawn. “We could explore that if only I weren’t so tired and caffeine deprived. Such a shame.”  
  
Usnavi knocks the lamp over in his hurry to get out of bed.  
  
“I think we’ve made him dangerous, Usnavi,” says Vanessa. “I _like_ it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full chapter listing, because i ran out of space in the actual summary:
> 
> 1\. la mañana siguiente (the morning after _your body is a triangle_ )  
> 2\. ligero y dulce (usnavi and his life in coffee)  
> 3\. que calor (vanessa, in the barrio and out of it)  
> 4\. oye qué pasó (ruben hasn't lost his science mojo)  
> 5\. feliz cumpleaños (it's ruben's birthday)  
> 6\. mantener el equilibrio (on karmic consequences)  
> 7\. nueve a cinco (usnavi's having bodega problems)*  
> 8\. permitir que el amor florece (vanessa, on love and control)*  
> 9\. contemplar las carreteras (on de ja vu)  
> 10\. el cable(ado) (on being wired differently)  
> 11\. fronteras de tu cuerpo (usnavi catches a break)*  
> 12\. tres vidas en imágenes (texts and notes and coffee mugs) [multimedia chapter]  
> 13\. control de veneno (on memory, reliability and straight-up stubborn persistence)  
> 14\. cantamos de amor (on tuning)  
> 15\. no me despiertes (on sleep)  
> 16\. medio año (bonus footage from the first six months)  
> 17\. encender (blazin' it with the trio)  
> 18\. dulzura (romantic gestures with ruben)  
> 19\. tiempo suéter (recovery fashion)


	2. ligero y dulce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [expanded from an ask on tumblr about ruben bringing usnavi coffee. though actually not a lot of ruben until towards the end: a character study of usnavi and his feelings about coffee. set before anyone realises their big OT3 crushes.
> 
> warning for talking about canonical character deaths (usnavi's parents, and abuela claudia). i dont know if usnavi's parents were ever canonically named - if they were someone let me know.]

Light and sweet is how Usnavi’s always made his coffee, is how Usnavi’s always preferred it, ever since the first time his pai put a half-full mug on the table in front of him on his seventh birthday.  
  
“You’re old enough now to know about this,” says Pai, fixing Usnavi with a slow, serious stare.  
  
“Mateo!” scolds Usnavi’s mamá. “He shouldn’t be drinking that, you’ll get him all wound up. Anyway, he’s far too young to need the energy.”  
  
“Such an American way to think about it, Rosa, De la Vegas do not drink coffee because we _need_ it. We drink it because we know the secret.” He reaches across the table to tap Usnavi’s nose. “And now you are ready to know it too, mijo.”  
  
His dad is whispering, so Usnavi whispers too: “what secret?” he asks, leaning in. He’s seven years old now. He’s ready to know everything.  
  
“People are like coffee,” his dad begins, holding his hands up like they’re framing a picture. This is how his dad starts a lot of sentences.  
  
“Ay, dios mio, this again,” Mamá mutters, running the faucet to clean the breakfast plates.  
  
“You can learn everything there is to know about someone from how they take their coffee, Usnavi. Your mamá, for instance, has a little bit of fire so she always adds some cinnamon. And I take extra sugar since I met her, because she makes my life so sweet.”  
  
She turns around to flick water at him, but she’s smiling.  
  
“She pretends I am a fool, but that line won her over when I asked her to go out with me,” says Pai in a confiding tone. “But, that’s the cinnamon in her. Take it from me, Usnavi. There are people who say, oh, you shouldn’t add milk, or sugar, you shouldn’t do this or that.”  
  
Usnavi is wide-eyed, nodding seriously at this new and amazing wisdom. His father pushes the mug a little closer to him, and says, “Those people do not know that the only way to make a perfect coffee is to make it with love - because then you will _understand_ their order, not just _know_ it.”  
  
“Your father is a hopeless romantic,” Mamá tells Usnavi, rolling her eyes. “It’s okay if you don’t want to drink it. Mateo, he's too young, I don’t think he will like the taste.”  
  
Usnavi _isn’t_ too young. Usnavi is seven years old, and he knows the secret now. He takes a cautious sip.  
  
Oh. “Wow,” he says, and tastes it again. “ _Wow_.”  
  
“I knew he’d like it,” says his dad triumphantly. “I made it just how it suits him: light and sweet.”  
  
***  
  
Usnavi all through childhood and far into his teens gets similar reports home from school: a bright boy, not brilliant, academically far below average but clearly smart. A little too smart sometimes, some of them say, and too loud and too excited and he never can sit still.

“I blame all that caffeine you gave him as a little one, Mateo,” says his mamá. “I told you he didn’t need the extra energy.”  
  
Actually, Usnavi only drinks two cups a day, - one made by Mamá with breakfast, one made by his pai after dinner. Sometimes more, if they have friends over. Guests drink out of whichever mismatched patterned cups are nearest on the shelf, but the De la Vegas always use the same cups every time. Green for his mom and blue for his dad and bright, bright red for Usnavi.  
  
Despite their criticisms his teachers usually like him, and despite his friends teasing that _Usnavi never shuts up_ nobody seems to be genuinely bothered by it. Maybe they know the secret too: it’s not caffeine that makes Usnavi talk so fast and move so much. It’s just that he’s so full of love, for his friends and his parents and his fire escape, for everything in his barrio and for the Dominican Republic far far away. He can’t keep it all inside. It trips off his tongue in freestyle and it flows from his hands when he’s working in the store. His customers all sigh in satisfaction when he hands them their drinks and they say “your papá taught you well.”  
  
***

Usnavi’s almost eighteen, the sun is almost rising, and he’s already had far more than two coffees today. They all tasted wrong, burnt and stale the way it always is from machines, the way it always is in plastic cups. Paper cups still aren’t ideal but it’s what they use at the bodega, because they can’t exactly afford glass or china for everyone to take away and the slight dry rasp is better than plastic aftertaste.  
  
The Rosarios drove him home from the hospital. They’d stayed with him all night. He’s already had far more than two but he goes to brew another anyway, because it always calms him down in a way that doesn’t quite make sense and because he doesn’t know what else to do.  
  
He’s mechanical through the motions, a practiced sort of dance, until he automatically pulls three mugs - green and blue and red - down from the cupboard and then he just  _stops,_ staring at them lined up in front of him.  
  
“Hey, hey, come on, Usnavi, siéntate, come sit.” Camila has him by the shoulders and is steering him to sit at the kitchen table. Kevin is in the other room, talking quietly to someone on the phone. Nina takes over making drinks.  
  
Usnavi wouldn’t have been able to make it right today anyway. Perfect coffee is made with love, and usually he’s overflowing with it, but today he feels empty.  
  
Nina’s pushing his red cup into his hands - her own and the one she’s made for Camila are both the mugs they save for guests, she knew not to use the others. It’s a nice gesture, he knows, and somewhere under all the numbness he’s grateful, but the first sip still tastes wrong. She’d hurried the process of making it to get it to him faster, she hadn’t properly spooned out the sugar. It’s not sweet enough, and instead of _light_ it’s only weak.  
  
Something rushes through him all of a sudden and he throws the mug against the wall. Nina flinches, then immediately comes to wrap him in a hug.  
  
“They’re gone,” he sobs. “They’re gone.”  
  
“I know,” is all she says, and rocks him softly. Distantly, he’s glad she’s there but the only thing he can focus on right now is the two cups still on the counter, green and blue together, and Usnavi’s cup all red and smashed up on the floor.  
  
  
***  
  
Not long after his parents pass on, Abuela Claudia brings him coffee in the bodega. It seems unnecessary, considering he’s not exactly in short supply, but still, it’s desperately needed these days. He never used to be this tired.  
  
“Gracias, Abuela,” he says. It wasn’t necessary, but the gesture makes him feel a little less run down anyway. Everyone’s been so good, everyone’s there for him as much as they can be but it doesn’t change the fact that he gets up alone before sunrise now, so that he can get to the store in time. There’s almost never customers at half past six, but that’s the time they’ve always opened and he’s not going to change that. Nobody slides a bright red cup across the table to him while he eats breakfast any more.  
  
Abuela Claudia presses her hands to either side of his face and gives him a long, inscrutable look.  
  
“You make sure to drink that,” she says finally, letting him go. “I made it exactly right.”  
  
“I know, Abuela,” he says, and he’s not smiling big but he’s smiling for real. “You always do.”  
  
She ambles back to her apartment but stands on the stoop even though it’s cold out, watching from a distance. Usnavi takes a sip. It tastes a little different to usual, which is strange - Abuela Claudia really does always make it _exactly_ the same each time.  
  
He lets it linger in his mouth on the second sip to try and pinpoint the change. Right amount of milk, the right amount of sugar. Not scalded or overbrewed. It tastes like maybe she just added slightly more grounds than usual: still light, still sweet, but just a little stronger.  
  
When he looks over to Abuela Claudia, she waves and calls out, “Paciencia y fe! How’s the drink?”  
  
There’s a little hum of energy in him that came on too quick to be caffeine. It doesn’t fill him head to toe like the way it used to. It’s something, though. Usnavi’s always stayed standing somehow, he can get back up when he falls.  
  
“It’s perfect, Abuela!” he shouts back.  
  
If anyone knows the secret that his pai taught him, it’d be her.  
  
***  
  
The way he misses Abuela when she’s gone isn’t _less_ than his parents, but it doesn’t hurt the same way. They had been so young, and so had he. Abuela’s death was a shock, but far less so, and even though he grieves for her and misses her every day, she taught him too well for him to wallow.  
  
The barrio is full of love, the same way as Usnavi: things change too much, and people will always leave, but that part has stayed true so far. If he’s sticking around to tell Abuela’s story, he’ll tell it with his actions, and he does. He channels her love all through into his work and though less people these days actually say “your papá taught you well’, he knows it to be true whenever they get the Look after he hands over their order.  
  
The barrio is full of love and Usnavi never doubts it, and he knows his place within it, but Jesus, he wishes he could experience that Look from the other side, because nobody here knows how to make a _goddamn_ drink properly.  
  
They’re too impatient to wait (Sonny), or they leave it way too long (Benny), or they roll all the beans in toxic waste before they grind them (Vanessa, probably. Usually Usnavi can identify someone’s problem, whether it’s the temperature or the grind or the water or whatever, but he has no _idea_ what Vanessa does to hers to make it taste like that. If he took the ‘perfect coffee is made with love’ a little more literally, he’d probably think she hated him).  
  
Usnavi will never, ever tell any of them that they’re bad at it. They try so hard, he doesn’t have the heart: he’ll drink every drop of every cup that comes his way from one of his friends, but he usually tries to intercede with offers to take over before they have the chance. Everyone lets him, because he _is_ the best at it. Eventually, it's automatic that he’s on coffee duty even if he’s the one visiting them.  
  
It’s absolutely a relief that he’ll probably never have to drink Vanessa’s hell beverage ever again. But it's still kind of a pain in the ass when Benny swings by at closing time so they can go chill at Usnavi’s apartment, and Benny immediately falls all over the couch with a loud groan saying “I need an energy boost”.  
  
It’s been a long day for both of them and Usnavi’s been on his feet for all of it, but Benny is taking up all of the space. “I guess I’m just s’posed to stand, then?”  
  
“I’ll scoot over when you’re back with the coffee,” says Benny, face first in the cushions. “Let me have my moment.”  
  
“Wow, assume much? I keep this whole barrio fuelled all day and this is how you talk to me. Nobody ever brings _me_ coffee,” Usnavi laments.  
  
“Usnavi, that’s because you hate our coffee,” says Benny patiently, lifting his head off the couch.  
  
Fuck! He’s been caught!

“What?” says Usnavi, attempting to look casual and sincere. “That’s absolutely not at all true, who told you that? You all…do such good coffee.”  
  
“Please stop, you know it physically hurts me that you suck so much at lying.” Benny squints at him. “Jesus, dont tell me you honestly thought you were fooling us? We’ve known you for years _,_ and you’re kind of ridiculously easy to read.”  
  
Usnavi wilts. “You’re just…I just don't understand how so many people can be so collectively _bad_ at such a simple thing? I could do it when I was _eight_.”  
  
“We’ve not all got your magic touch, I guess,” says Benny. “You still won’t tell us how you do it.”  
  
“The secret ingredient is love,” says Usnavi. He tells them that every time - he’s long since given up trying to give actual practical advice because he knows it never sticks. They probably don’t believe this answer, either, even though it’s true. Really, he doesn’t mind too much, because turns out that’s the secret ingredient to a _lot_ of things and he’s never felt lacking for it in any other way.  
  
But man, it’s been way too long since someone else made him a drink right.

***  


Ruben’s order surprised him on the first day they met, and only makes less sense the more Usnavi learns about him. There’s rare moments where Ruben’s confident side peeks through the weight of everything that’s happened to him, and Usnavi thinks he can see the cinnamon that reminds him of Vanessa. That part makes sense. Except where Vanessa likes her spiced-but-light, Ruben takes his black. It’s not that Usnavi is against that, it just doesn’t quite _fit_. It bothers him way too much: how can he get Ruben’s order perfect if he doesn’t understand it?  
  
“Is it one of your weird self-denying misery things?” asks Usnavi one day.  
  
Ruben laughs into his paper cup. It’s messy. “Jesus, you’re melodramatic,” he says, wiping his face on one sleeve. “Don’t read so much into it. I’ve just always drunk it like this ever since I was a kid.”  
  
“But…why?”  
  
“It’s how Ma always took hers,” Ruben shrugs. “Guess it made me feel like a grown-up to copy her. I usually have lattes, actually, when it’s not me making it. Black coffee is best if you brew it right, but most places don’t know what the hell they’re doing and you gotta drown out the burnt taste with half a gallon of creamer.”  
  
“Do I make it right, then?”  
  
“Why do you think I keep coming here instead of a place with actual tables?” Ruben kicks his feet out where they’re swinging off the counter.  
  
“Cheap? Literally on the same street you live on?You were hoping to strike up conversation with the cute barista?” Usnavi suggests.  
  
“All of the above,” says Ruben. “But also, genuinely the best coffee I’ve ever had. I’m impressed. What’s your secret?”  
  
Usually when people ask that question, Usnavi just says _love,_ but for some reason the compliment threw him for a loop this time. “Oh, uh, I mean, there’s no real trick to it. Like you said, creamer or milk can cover a lot of mistakes so you gotta put in a bit more thought when it’s black. Less margin for error. But it’s really just about being a little more careful and paying a little more attention, you know?”  
  
“Well, looks like the extra effort is worth it,” says Ruben.  
  
“Yeah,” says Usnavi, watching Ruben closely. “It is.”  
  
***

Although yeah, he’s old enough and busy enough now that he does actually need the energy, he still remembers being seven years old, learning coffee truth from his pai, so Usnavi takes great care to properly _appreciate_ at least one of his several drinks through the day. Usually this is the one he takes on his midday break. He can still add the secret ingredient even when it's just for him: doesn’t hurt to show yourself a little love, he reasons.  
  
It’s one of his most sacred moments. This makes it a bit disconcerting one day when Ruben comes in and slides behind the counter, holding two ceramic mugs that are clearly his own and passing one over to Usnavi.  
  
“You know I can get that here myself, right? I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s kind of what I do,” asks Usnavi, taking it from him anyway.  
  
“Yeah, but that’s _work_ ,” says Ruben. “and it’s 12:15, which means this is your break, which means you shouldn’t work, which means I bring you coffee. That’s how it is.”

Well, shit, if this is gonna be a regular occurrence that means that he’s going to have to sacrifice the joy of those fifteen quiet minutes in the middle of the day with a perfectly made café con leche that he can actually savor. And he won’t say a goddamn word about it, because whatever new horror Ruben is about to inflict on him is outweighed by Ruben taking the initiative on something instead of hanging back, and Ruben looking a bit like he expects Usnavi to knock the cup out of his hands and yell at him. What choice is there, really?

Ugh. The things Usnavi does for his friends. He prepares to make his _oh damn this is great_ face that apparently nobody else ever buys, but maybe Ruben hasn’t figured out yet, and takes a sip.

Wait.  
  
Fucking wait.  
  
He’d expected too much milk or not enough, since Ruben never has any at all in his own, and too much sugar or too little because Ruben only knows cinnamon. It’s maybe no surprise that it’s not bitter if Ruben’s used to black but it doesn’t go too far in the other direction like he thought it probably would.  
  
Check a second time. Yeah. Definitely not overbrewed or scalded. The beans are a little stale, but then Ruben drinks at the bodega so often that he probably doesn’t get through them very fast at home. It’s cooled just enough on the walk over, hot but not blistering.  
  
Usnavi is kind of aware that he's not said anything for way too long and that Ruben is eyeing him with a sort of bemused concern. It’s just.  
  
The bell above the door rings and he’s dimly aware that it’s Benny but forgets to actually greet him.

Like, it’s not as good as his dad’s or Abuela’s and definitely not as good as Usnavi’s but.  
  
“Man, what did you _do_ to him?” Benny asks Ruben. “He’s literally not stopped talking since I met him til now. Tell me your secrets.”

“I made him coffee,” says Ruben. “So this doesn’t usually happen? I wasn't sure if it was just a thing he does.”

“Benny,” says Usnavi. Ruben startles a little next to him. “ _Benny_ ,” Usnavi repeats more firmly.

“Yeah?”

Usnavi leans across the counter with what he just _knows_ are wide, vaguely crazy eyes, grabs Benny by the shoulders, and whispers, “ _this coffee is good_.”

“…Holy _shit_ ,” says Benny, awestruck.


	3. que calor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i think the age difference between usnavi and vanessa in the show is a few more years, but i’ve already changed this a bit for this ‘verse so they’re all a little closer in age. this takes place over various years but for reference, approximate ages during your body is a triangle - which is set about two years after In The Heights - vanessa is 23, usnavi is 24, ruben is 28.]
> 
> [content warning: vanessa’s mom is an alcoholic (this doesnt show up in the soundtrack, but its in the full ITH script) and their relationship is pretty toxic, though not maliciously so.]

Vanessa age seventeen spends the fourth of July on the rooftop of Abuela Claudia’s building with Nina and Usnavi. Abuela is the one who bought off the superintendent with homemade capuchinos, but once they’re up there she just leaves them with a pile of blankets to sit on and goes back inside. She always knows like psychically when to give them space even before they realise it themselves, so seems they’ll probably need it tonight.  
  
Usually there would be so many of them here for the celebrations, Benny and the Rosarios and the De la Vegas and Abuela. Sometimes even Vanessa’s mom, though that’s never a guarantee. But Benny and his mom are away for the weekend, and the Rosarios are both working the night shift at the dispatch. Vanessa’s mom said she wasn’t in the mood. The De la Vegas are -

Well.   
  
Usually the roof would be full of noise, but instead Nina sits on one side of Usnavi and Vanessa on the other. They each hold one of his hands and whisper under the popping and screeching of the fireworks about where they might be watching from this time next year, or the one after, or in ten, about all the places they plan to go.

Vanessa and Nina and Usnavi have all been fuse lit ready to take flight for a long time. Nina was a NASA rocket preparing for launch from the top of a fire escape ever since she learnt to read. It frustrates her that she can’t go to college straight from high school, she tells them, that even with scholarships it’s too much money for now. Her parents keep working harder just like she always has done and she knows she’ll get there one day. Vanessa doesn’t doubt her.  
  
Usnavi’s always been on a direct missile strike course for DR since forever and his targeting system has got even more intensely focused recently, though where he’ll ever find the money for it nobody knows. He’s still trying to get his feet back underneath him since his parents died six months ago. Vanessa worries sometimes he’ll never be as happy as he used to. The thought scares her in a deep, hollow way she doesn’t entirely understand and she firmly shuts it away so she doesnt have to deal with it.

Vanessa doesn’t know where she’s gonna end up when she leaves. Someone struck a match under all three of them but the other two know where they’re headed and Vanessa has the uncomfortable feeling that she’s a firework herself, no destination other than up and then outward in glorious self-destruction. She can feel sparks crackling under her skin all the time, itching like a never-ending allergic reaction.  


***  
  
Vanessa at nineteen feels a lot like she’s about to explode, most of the time. She sneaks into the club on a fake ID to dance off all the pent-up sensation, and if that doesn’t do it she sneaks boys back to her room while her mom is more unconscious than asleep. The elevated train masks the muffled noises while she lets loose some of the constant pressure that always seems to be building and building inside her.

Boys are fun while the night is fully dark. But even though the ones who catch her eye always have some depth to their smiles, have more to say than just copied lines they rehearse to perfection, they’re always boring in the morning, fast fading afterglows of the bright light trails they tease across her body in her room the night before. They get greyer by the hour the longer she lets them stay: dull washed-out figures leaving via the fire escape in the first pink-gold suggestions of sunrise, so most of them are gone before the dawn.  


Vanessa feels desaturated in the daytime too, staying up far too late on worknights and yawning while she sweeps the salon floor. She’s not a morning person at the best of times.

“And how is my cheeriest employee today, looking oh-so-happy and well rested?” sings Daniela, always way too upbeat at this godawful hour.

Vanessa leans her forehead uncomfortably on the handle of the broom and says “uuugh”.  
  
Dani clicks her tongue at her. “Don’t think I don’t know why you are so tired, you’ll get no sympathy from me. But! I am a good, kind boss, so you may go and get us all café, instead of scaring the customers away with that face of yours.”

“ _Uuugh,”_ Vanessa says even louder, taking the cash Dani is holding out to her and stomping to the bodega, but she doesn’t really mind. Usnavi in one of his endless selections of red shirts is a scarlet beacon from a mile away and he radiates pure caffeine. His aura is contagious: she feels a little more colorful as soon as she walks in the store, she feels a little more awake.

***

There’s boys everywhere that think her confidence is a challenge to them personally, who try to keep her weighted down from the freedom she feels when she lets herself strut with their stares and shouts and the _incredibly_ wrong assumption that she wants their gormless, sweaty, Axe-scented bodies all up in her sheets.

“Men are such cabrones,” she bursts out the second she slams through the door.  
  
“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know,” agrees her mom from the couch, raising her beer in solidarity. It’s only half past one but Vanessa’s too buzzed on indignation to comment. “Hope you showed him where he stands.”  
  
“Threw my drink in his face,” she says.  
  
“That’s my niña petarda _,_ ” says Mom. That’s what she’s always called Vanessa, her firecracker kid, in these rare sweet moments when Vanessa feels like all the rage that she can’t seem to keep inside isn’t such a bad thing, is something she can own.  
  
“Just a shame to waste Usnavi’s coffee like that,” she says, smiling. “And that it wasn't hotter.”  
  
Her mom laughs, but of course the moment doesn’t last long.  
  
“The boys wouldn’t yell after you so much if you dressed a little…you know.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Vanessa snaps, immediately aggravated. She hates how easily riled she gets when she knows her mom doesn’t mean to sound the way she does, but she can’t stop herself. Their relationship is a two decade paper trail of thoughtless comments and selfish acts and empty bottles, none of them on their own a big deal but they all seem to collect together somewhere just underneath the surface and over time she’s run out of space to keep them, so that even the smallest thing brings them all rushing upwards like a volcanic eruption. “Why should I be responsible for them being pendejos?”  
  
“I’m just saying, Vanessa, people will talk.”  
  
“So let them,” she says fiercely. “I’m not ashamed of who I am.”  
  
“You don’t need to get so _angry_ ,” Mom says, frustrated, rubbing her temples like she’s getting a headache. “I’m just trying to help, you know that, right? I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did at your age.”  
  
“Mistakes like having a kid, you mean.”  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
She didn’t have to. Vanessa already knows. She refuses to cry about it any more.  
  
Mom sighs. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how we always end up - I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Vanessa, deflating. “Me too.”  
  
***  
  
She’s got a different sort of restlessness as she gets older, but it’s always still right there. Now she knows herself better she can use it to her advantage: Vanessa is a one-hit KO with a spiked heel jammed down into the top of someone’s sneaker, a slim and jewellery-studded hand twisting a shirt collar just a little too hard round someone’s neck to spit rejections in their ear and she stands taller than them all. They can’t even fuckin’ touch her: she’s too hot in every sense of it, letting herself smolder just enough to remind them that she can be an inferno if they push her.

There’s a studio downtown somewhere that wants her to make it home. It’s driving her insane. She could be long gone now except that her mom always needs something, always apologetic but never quite enough to not ask. _Vanessa, I’m really sorry but I can’t quite make the rent_ and _Vanessa, if you can just cover groceries for these next few weeks while I sort this whole mess out_ , but the mess never gets sorted out for very long.

They don’t fight any more, not like they used to. It maybe should seem better but it doesn’t. Her mom’s lost the first part of ‘functional alcoholic’, depressed and basically housebound, and it’s Vanessa who has to pick up the slack.  


“Vanessa…I hate to do this but I need some money for the bills? It’s only for this month, I swear.”

It’s not her mom’s fault. Things could be so much worse. God, she needs to leave.

_This is the last time_ , she says to herself, and cuts her paycheck again so her mom can keep the lights on.

She says that every time. It’ll be true eventually, it’s just complicated. Vanessa loves her mom but she’s sick of this post-work routine, collecting the unopened warnings about money owed sitting in the mailbox, tipping dregs from out of vodka glasses down the sink, draping a blanket over her mother who is curled up on the sofa.

If Vanessa’s mom didn't want her to make the same mistakes, didn’t want her to be tied down to responsibility too young and sacrificing what she wants to take care of someone who can’t do it for themselves, how the hell did they end up here?

“V’nessa,” mumbles Mom, and it’s not clear if the slurring is from sleep or too much drink. “‘m sorry. I am. I’m sorry.”  
  
She says that every time and nothing ever changes.  
  
“I know,” says Vanessa, with a sigh.  
  
“Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Fuck, that’s so not fair. She bites down on her anger, she’s getting better at that these days. But she didn’t sign up for this. Vanessa doesn't like being obligated, Vanessa doesn’t like being weighed down, Vanessa burns and burns and burns without ever taking off but the fuse is getting shorter. The rattle of the train when she lays in bed at night is a pulling in her bones enticing her to see who she can be when she’s not tethered to the barrio.

***  


She’d always said to herself that when she left she’d leave clean, start over completely, they’d never see her again. Usnavi ruined all that, without even knowing what he’d done. She was making calls and signing papers, she was almost ready to go…then there was the whole thing with the lotto, and she nearly lost him to DR, and it hit her like she’d jumped in front of the train instead of getting on it: she didn’t want to let him go.

He’d always been a bright point in Vanessa’s day, he was the whole reason she was here with boxes packed and a place that was just for her. Dani had said he had sworn her to secrecy that it was Usnavi who sorted things out with the credit check. It wasn’t something he did to get Vanessa to like him, to get her to be with him. He just did it to make her happy, because he’s Usnavi.

So the new start ends up not being quite as thorough as she’d planned it, but over time it becomes clear that Usnavi isn’t a rope tying her back to her past at all: they’re elastic, always bound together but with enough give to still wander alone. They’ve got their own lives too.

Dani sometimes comments when she visits that they’ll surely be moving in together soon, but even after two amazing years with him the time just isn’t right. Vanessa’s not saying never, but the bodega is Usnavi’s home right now and the studio is hers and while she would love to sleep with him in her arms every single night, they’re both where they need to be for the moment.  


She didn’t know commitment could be this way. It always seemed like it would be all or nothing. Turns out, she can have her freedom and her space and her studio downtown, but she can also have this: evenings curled around Usnavi in his bed, letting his coffee and cheap soap smell surround her, losing herself in all his stories about Sonny, or the ridiculous thing some customer did today, or the new guy on the block.  
  
In fact, she hears a _lot_ about the new guy on the block. She’s never met the dude and already she knows how Ruben takes his coffee and how early Ruben starts his day and that Ruben is funny and gentle and-  
  
“-just like, insane levels of clever. Oh, man, I can’t wait for him to meet Nina! They’re both nerds, I bet they’ll love each other. I can’t wait for him to meet _you_.”  
  
“Wait, why _haven’t_ I met him yet?” she frowns. It’s been weeks since Ruben moved in, and she’s not here all the time but she’s here pretty often. Seems weird they’ve not crossed paths.  
  
“Oh,” says Usnavi, suddenly awkward. “He, uh, he doesn’t really come out when it’s busy, you know?”  
  
“Kinda shy or something?”  
  
“Yeah, I guess he sort of is.” Usnavi gives her a quick worried glance like she’ll think less of Ruben for that. “But he’s great, really he is. He just needs someone to tell him it, and then he’ll get more confident.”  
  
Looks like Usnavi’s taken that role on for himself already. And Vanessa doesn’t know how she missed it til now but she’s seen him look this way before: she sees it aimed in her direction every time she walks into the bodega and pulls him in to kiss him.  
  
No me _diga_ , she mouths to herself as he turns his back to shut the light off.

***  
  
It’s not something Vanessa brings up right away, because she’s not got a lot of evidence to go on and she doesn’t really know what events it might set off, but after the first time she meets Ruben and sees the two of them together it’s obvious that a) she’s so incredibly goddamn right, and b) that Usnavi is probably not going to figure this out on his own but it’s really something he should know about himself.  
  
If nothing else, so that she can tease him about his big stupid crush on a boy who looks _so_ much like him. It’s just too fucking funny.

When she lets Usnavi in on it, she can’t help but laugh at his dumbstruck expression as things click into place. But she holds him close when he says “that- that- but I _can’t_ ,” shaking his head wildly.  
  
“Babe, it’s okay. I don’t mind that you like dudes too. I’ve kind of suspected for a while.”  
  
“No, no, that’s not -well, that part is kind of a huge fucking shock, yeah, but I mean that I can’t, it’s… but I love _you_ ,” he says, with an anguished face. Any fears about him maybe wanting Ruben more than her that she’s been trying to keep pushed down dissolve instantly at that look.

“Oh, Usnavi, I know _that_ ,” she says. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

She’s not really all that worried, to be honest. They don’t own each other, after all, and if anyone has love to spare, it’s Usnavi.

***

The more she gets to know him, the more she realises this too: if anyone needs a little extra love it’s Ruben.

He’s sweet but _Christ_ , he’s sad, and he tries to hide himself with his sleeves over his hands and his head ducked low but the way he unfurls when Usnavi pays attention to him, talking just a little louder and standing just a little taller, she _can’t_ feel jealous of that. She’s never been shy herself but she remembers too well the days when Usnavi seemed like the only injection of color into her long tedious mornings at the salon.

It helps that, although she’s never been able to let affection pour off her in a wave the way Usnavi does, as she gets to know Ruben he seems to feed off whatever energy she gives off too, grinning when she comes to visit and sitting up straighter in his spot atop the counter.

She’d sort of imagined him to be a quieter, less confident version of Usnavi, maybe because they look alike, but he’s got an edge she didn’t expect that Usnavi’s never had. Ruben’s way more willing to join in with all her acerbic observations about people passing by the window, he’s got a look that passes over him sometimes like he’s burning on the inside. It doesn’t fit at all with the way he holds himself or the volume of his voice.  


This much she’ll say about Ruben, he’s never quite predictable.

They’re both in the bodega with Usnavi out back signing off on delivery. It’s a hot day, late spring heating up the Heights so Vanessa’s feeling a summertime kind of stunning in sunglasses and her shortest skirt.  
  
The usual downsides apply. She’s wandering idly round the aisles while Ruben flips through a magazine up front when some shiny-biceped creep in a muscle tee stands right up close beside her.  
  
“Damn, ¡estás buena! It’s nearly as hot as you are out there.”  
  
She turns her back to browse a different shelf like she hasn’t even heard him, lazily reading the back of a pop tart box.  
  
“You wanna get out of the heat? How about you come back to my place, I’ll blast the A/C, we can maybe take some layers off.”

Is this guy for real trying to use the fact he has air-con as a pickup line? Jesus, he’s got no game. “Nah man,” she says, in a bored voice. “I’m good.”  
  
“Aw, come on, I’ll make it worth your time.”  
  
“Nope. Woah now, back the fuck up,” she says, holding up a hand as he tries to step way too much into her space, tries to put his arm around her shoulders. Then there’s someone else’s hand on the guy’s chest too, pushing in between them. It’s not Usnavi.

“She said no,” says Ruben firmly and his voice is rock solid but his eyes are like, bigger than his face in fear. The guy looks between them for a second but decides it’s not worth the effort.

“Alright, whatever, I was only kidding anyway,” he mutters, and wanders off to go be repulsive at some other unlucky woman.

Ruben breathes out a loud, slow exhale, eyes still kinda bugged out as he watches him leave the store.

“I could’ve handled that.” Vanessa doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful. Actually, she meant to say _thanks_ , but she’s always weirdly uncomfortable with guys intervening like this. Except when it’s Usnavi, because Usnavi knows she can look after herself and just doesn’t think she should _have_ to. She doesn't need Ruben to fight this barely-even-a-battle for her. Look at him, he’s almost fucking shaking, does he really think he could’ve dealt out anything she couldn’t do better? 

“I know you could,” Ruben says, with a tiny unexpected laugh. “I saw you throw a can of soda at a guy from across the street last week. You’ve got a good arm.”

“Oh,” she says. He sounds like he genuinely believes she could’ve taken care of it. “So why get involved? Like, no offence, but you looked about two seconds away from shitting yourself. Still do, actually, are you okay?”

Ruben blows the question off, face twisting in an unreadable expression, and shrugs. “You said no. He should’ve listened.” His mouth is an unhappy line and he’s not meeting her eye. “ _Someone_ should step in.”

_For fuck’s sake, just say it, Vanessa._

“Thank you,” she manages. It sounds more forced and fake than she intended.

***

There’s a day when she comes in and Ruben’s sat alone in his usual spot. He doesn’t react to the bell, staring vacantly just above the door with his mouth slightly open.

“You’re gonna catch insects if you leave your face like that,” she says, leaning next to him.

“Hm?” he replies, vague, and it takes a moment for his eyes to focus. “Oh. Vanessa, hey. Sorry. I was miles away.”  
  
“Anywhere nice?” she asks lightly.  
  
“Not really,” he says, and doesn’t smile. He looks tired and dishevelled, like he hasn’t really slept.

There’s just something about Ruben that gets to her sometimes. Looking him over, in his black jeans and a dark grey sweater - in this fucking weather, what the hell - with dark circles under his eyes, he looks desaturated under the sunlight from the window. She’s heard him tease before about Usnavi being tiny but even though Ruben’s carrying more weight on his bones, Vanessa really thinks Ruben is the small one. Usnavi takes up the entire space of whatever room he’s in, he’s never learnt how to contain himself. Ruben is always hunched inward and compressed like he never learnt how _not_ to, like there’s too much feeling trapped underneath his skin with no way for it to escape.

He should really let some pressure off.  


Sometimes, even though Vanessa is happy with the way things are going, she wakes up and there’s a memory of that constant searing prickle of adolescent agitation in her veins. It’s not quite enough that she’d say it haunts her, just that sometimes her mind wanders back that way while she sleeps so that the whole next day feels like its underlaid with the rattle of the train and the faint scent of vodka.

What place does Ruben’s mind wander back to? For all the time Usnavi spent talking about him and despite how often they bump into one another in the store, Vanessa actually doesn’t know very much about his life. She’d asked Usnavi about it, after that time Ruben intervened with the creep hitting on her. There was something about his tight, sad expression that had made her feel uneasy.  
  
“He’s had a rough time,” is all Usnavi would say. “It’s really not mine to talk about.”

There’s no reason for Vanessa to care this much but she does. Even more so because Usnavi’s holding out on her. It just makes her want to poke at things until she figures out whats going on.

She jumps up on the counter next to him. _Okay, Ruben, tell me somethin’ I don't know._

“Y’know, I can’t believe I’ve never asked this,” she says, voice perfectly casual. “But how did you end up moving to the Heights, of all places?”

Ruben swings his legs while he thinks. “I guess I just wanted to start over,” he replies, finally. “I wanted somewhere that was _mine_. If that makes sense.”

Which isn’t really an answer, but it _is_ very intriguing and Vanessa never did like boys who bore her. Besides, she knows what he means.

“No, I get that,” she says. “I really get it.”


	4. oye qué pasó

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: set some unspecified time shortly after they all start dating for real. success is the best kind of revenge! shoutout to tomorrowsrain for reminding me of all my feels about young naive prodigy ruben and how he could've had so much more.
> 
> warning for discussion of past violence, and also mentions of rape/sexual assault (the latter is not explicit and nothing actually happened)]

“I had a crush on him,” Ruben says out of nowhere, one evening when they’re all piled on Usnavi's couch watching TV.  


Usnavi mutes the television, and they all sit up a little straighter so they can see each others faces.  
  
“On who?”  
  
“Jason. I had the biggest, stupidest, most waste-of-my-time crush on him. For years, even when I tried not to.”  
  
“Ew, why?” asks Vanessa. “He sounds like the biggest douchebag on the planet even without all the shit he did to you.”  
  
There’s a tiny chance she’s biased, but probably she’s just objectively right about this.

“Yeah, well. He was a very _attractive_ douchebag,” Ruben answers. “And I was twenty-two and I’d never dated, and only a couple months in at my first real job with a real PhD here’s the bigtime chief of neurosurgery telling me he’d heard I was brilliant. My ego was into it. And there was the whole scientific anomaly thing, I never could resist an impossible equation.”  
  
“I always forget how young you were, when this all started,” sighs Usnavi.

“I’m _still_ young, asshole.”

“…Did he know?” asks Usnavi, exchanging glances with Vanessa. Because honestly, every time they think they can’t hate Jason more something else seems to come up. If it turns out Jason knew barely-out-of-college, single, lonely Ruben had feelings for him and used that to make him do his dirty work then- well, Vanessawon’t be able to do anything about it, which she still fucking hates, but her and Usnavi will definitely find a private moment to share a bottle of wine and come up with creatively elaborate revenge ideas that they’ll never actually carry out like always.  
  
“No,” says Ruben. “Really don’t think he did. He was a selfish prick but honestly, that’s more because he was too fucking oblivious to anything two foot in front of his own dumb symmetrical face to even realise other people existed than because he was some mastermind manipulator. I’m pretty sure I could’ve given him a lapdance and he wouldn’t have even noticed I was _there_ unless I was holding a bottle of pills at the same time, never mind that I was into him.”

Vanessa fucking loves it when Ruben’s mad at people. Especially at this particular person, who continues to reaffirm his position as the worst piece of shit in the entire solar system with every word she hears about him. She kisses him, in the hopes that some positive reinforcement will encourage this kind of attitude more often, and Ruben smiles into it like he knows exactly what she’s about.

The smile drops and so does the irritated edge in his voice when he says, “Ian knew, though. Ian definitely knew.”  


He had his sleeves still rolled up from washing dishes after dinner - he’s been getting more comfortable staying uncovered in their apartments, even when sex isn’t imminent - but as soon as he mentions Ian they get pulled down far enough to cover even the couple of scars that creep from his arm onto the backs of his hands. A little alarm bell memory of one detail Usnavi had told her about the warehouse - _he made him take his clothes off, Vanessa, he made him just lie there waiting to get hurt without anything to hide behind -_ rings loudly and she feels ill with fear when she asks “Ruben, did he…he didn’t…?”  
  
“No,” says Ruben, thankfully catching her meaning so she doesn’t have to say it aloud. Even more thankfully, he doesn't sound like he’s lying - though he never usually lies anyway, he always just attempts to redirect conversation with absolutely minimum stealth. The way life seems to shit on him constantly, nothing would surprise Vanessa any more, but it’s a relief not to add _that_ to the list.

“Not that I would’ve put it past him,” continues Ruben, trying to sound steady. “If things had gone different. But, no. I might be overthinking, it’s just...the way he was, uh, during.” He indicates awkwardly at his arm. “Some of the things he said. And he was too nice to me, before, at least when he wasn't trying to kill me. The club that one time, he was so friendly. Took my hand after we jumped out the window, kept touching my shoulder or putting his hand on my chest. And I’m pretty sure its not because he admired my rippling pecs or my dancing, y’know? He wanted me on side.”

Ruben takes his notebook off the coffee table so he can tear a blank page out. He screws it up into a ball, which he throws hard against the wall with an almost sulky look, grinding his teeth. It’s infinitely preferable when his memories come out in this mood, bitter rather than scared, but she doesn't like either of them on him. “Nicer to me than Jason ever was, isn’t that fucked up? You spend five years creating a miracle drug for a guy that he won’t even let you make bank on, and it’s still the murder half of his brain that buys you dinner. I should’ve taken the million dollars and never looked back.”

“A million?!” says Usnavi, incredulous. “I knew he wouldn’t let you sell that sleeping drug thing but I didn't know you turned down a million dollars for him. Jesus, how symmetrical _was_ this guy’s face? Nobody’s _that_ pretty."  
  
“ _You’re_ prettier than a million dollars,” Ruben tells him. “At least a whole extra K prettier.”  
  
Ruben goofs around so much now whenever he’s telling them about this shit outside the context of a flashback: he doesn’t like it when the room gets too tense around him, finds it easier to get sentences out if they’re cushioned with some sarcasm. He’ll drop fragments of memories at random points in the most forcibly casual way. It makes it easier for all of them, really, to pretend like they’re discussing a bad day at work instead of what really happened.  
  
Even though the compliment was mostly to keep the mood light, Usnavi still pulls his hat down low to hide how pink he’s just turned.

“I guess you’re pretty too,” he mumbles and Ruben beams.  


They’re so disgustingly sweet together, it makes Vanessa’s heart feel all fucked up. How did she end up with two such _saps_?

“Not to derail the circle-jerk of ego that is two guys with basically the same face calling each other cute,” she says, before they try and drag her down with them. “But…Ruben. Tell me if I'm crossing into uncomfortable territory here, but… couldn’t you still do that? Couldn’t you still sell it?”  
  
Ruben freezes.  
  
“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry, I know there’s a lot of shit tied up in all that, of course you don’t wanna -“

“No,” he says. “No, Vanessa, you’re fucking _right._ I didn’t even think about it. I stopped everything before it went to proper research trials because I wouldn’t sell him out, and the whole thing just never took off. Nobody except me ever worked on it, there weren’t any samples in the lab and I deleted all traces of it off the system so they couldn’t have done anything with it when I was dead -“ Usnavi and Vanessa both flinch at the phrasing. Ruben doesn’t notice, on a full-speed chase with this train of thought as he jumps up from the couch “- but I kept hard copies of the most important stuff, nobody else knew about that. My mom saved all my research, she saved all my papers, and it wouldn't be too hard to fill in the gaps anything that’s not there. It’s still mine. Blackout still belongs to _me_.”  


This is the first time Vanessa’s ever seen Ruben take up space like this, his arms gesticulating, his pacing feet carrying him in a wide circle - he’s so into what he’s saying he doesn’t even notice when he bangs his leg into the coffee table. All the things they only ever see suppressed in glimpses or in the privacy of a bedroom are radiating: now _this_  is a look that suits him.

And then his face drops. “Oh. but…Jason. He was my trial subject, all the data is based on him. I can’t just give it all away.”

“But didn’t the whole Ian thing come out anyway, sort of?” asks Usnavi. “You said he had to tell when he finally got it treated, so its not like you’re revealing anything other than the sciencey stuff.”  


“Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s true… but. I said wouldn’t say anything. I _said_ I wouldn’t.” Ruben looks small again, biting his lip and staring way too intently down at his own socks instead of looking at either of them. Vanessa wonders if this is what it’d be like to watch his pre-Heights life in fast-forward, seeing that hyperactive flare of excitement about his work giving way to uncertainty and then fading into almost nothing like a doused fire.

How does this guy still have such a hold on him? Vanessa can feel her fists clenching instinctively. “No, fuck that. Haven’t you given up enough for that bastard, Ruben? You don’t owe him shit. Especially not five years of your work.“  
  
“I know that,” Ruben says, but he doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “I know. Even then…I really don't wanna have to get in touch with him, and they’d want some testimonial. I don’t wanna see his face or hear his voice ever again.”  
  
“Ruben,” says Usnavi. “This is yours, and if you say drop it, we won’t say another word about it. But if this is a thing you want to do, we can find a way to make it happen. We’ll…I don't know, contact your old lab so they can pass a message along without you having to speak to him yourself, there'll be a way around it. Hell, I’ll put a fucking sweater on and go meet him myself if that’s what it takes, since we apparently look so alike.”

He pokes Vanessa in the arm at that last bit: both he and Ruben find the idea that they’ve got similar features completely incomprehensible, despite how many people notice it.  


“You abso-fucking-lutely will not do that,” snaps Ruben. “I mean it. If this is something I decide to do, if I have to get in touch with him, I don’t want either of you anywhere near him, you got that?”

It’s not like him to demand things outright, so of _course_ he only does it now to keep them safe. He’s such an idiot, but Vanessa won’t deny him it.

Plus, it’s kind of hot when he’s like this.

“We got it,” she says seriously, and Usnavi nods. Ruben scrutinises both of them for a moment. Apparently satisfied with their sincerity, he drops down to sit back in between them.

“Wait. Am I for real doing this?” he says. “I think I’m doing this. Holy fuck.”

And he bursts into that high, uncontrollable giggle, the one Usnavi tries to pull out of him at any possible occasion. Vanessa knows why: Ruben doesn’t often laugh this freely but when he does it always makes her feel the way she did the night Usnavi announced he was staying in the Heights after all, when they met up alone and he said _we never got round to drinking this yesterday,_ holding out a bottle to her. Ruben laughing, and the sight of Usnavi smiling at him with his hand over his mouth like he’s trying to hold off from joining in, is like the cold happy fizz of drinking champagne in Bennet Park at sunset.

She doesn’t tell them this, just interlaces her fingers with Ruben’s and says “a million dollar drug? That must be some good shit.”

Ruben grins at her. “It was. It will be. Sleeping drug, no hangover, exponentially smaller risk of dependency than anything on the market right now. Do you know how many conditions are made so much worse by associated insomnia, or by side-effects from current meds? PTSD, depression, the amount of avenues for potential improvements Blackout could open up for mental health alone, you’ve no fucking idea. It could be amazing. This could be _amazing_.”  
  
Jesus. She knew he was good at his old job, there’s never been any doubt about that, but it’s something else seeing him talk for real about what he can do.Is this how he used to be, back before someone tried to steal all the life and potential from him?

Rubens’s grabbed his notebook back off the coffee table and is scribbling away in tiny, neat handwriting, talking almost as fast as Usnavi usually does. “I mean, there’s a few things I’d want to refine, and I’d have to find a lab that’d take on the project, but that’s no issue, people would be lining up round the block for something like this. God, imagine what I could do with it if I have a whole team developing it this time! Shit, and I need to call my mom, get her to forward all my research to me.”  
  
He’s already scrolling through his contacts when Usnavi leans over and plucks the phone out of his hand. “Dude, it’s eleven pm. You’re gonna scare the shit out of her if you call her this late.” He sets the phone down on the table and kisses Ruben hard, both hands on his cheeks. “Just enjoy the moment, okay? You can start on your work tomorrow.”  
  
“ _My_ work,” Ruben repeats, breaking out into another smile. He glances from Usnavi to Vanessa, and he looks so goddamn proud of himself. “It’s _my_ work. It’s still mine.”


	5. feliz cumpleaños

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i turned 25 a couple days ago and im so overwhelmed by all the gifts and love i got. a gift to you in return: a fic for anyone who has made it so much further than they ever expected to. you’re all doing great.]
> 
> (warning for a couple brief mentions of past suicidal feelings)

Summertime weighs heavily through thick clothing and so it’s Ruben’s habit of waking up early that provides the nicest respite from the usual, walking the block when there’s something less used about the air.  
  
It also provides him these moments with Usnavi, both of them with their hands around Ruben’s coffee cup at the same time because Usnavi is reluctant to move his away.

“You wanna drink these outside?” Ruben asks, once his coffee has been released to him. “It’s still cool out.”

They sit on the stoop that Ruben has been informed used to belong to Usnavi’s sort-of Abuela and Usnavi bumps the backs of their hands together; Ruben moves his so that they’re palm to palm with their fingers intertwined.

“Are you coming to Nina’s welcome home thing tonight?” Usnavi asks him. “She’s looking forward to meeting you.”  
  
“Not sure,” says Ruben. At this moment it sounds like fun, and not too much too handle - just dinner, and people who he already knows, apart from Nina - but it’s only morning, and there’s a lot that can change across a day.

“Okay,” says Usnavi agreeably, with a squeeze of Ruben’s hand, and then leaves it at that.  
  
It’s not clear what the three of them are right now, though the uncertainty isn’t actually unpleasant. They slept together that night two weeks ago and fooled around the morning after, and then things skipped backwards to something more cautious, and probably for the best. Even though Ruben knows the situations couldn't be more different, he’s come too far to immediately leave his whole world balancing on the whim of two other people again. He’s a newcomer to a two year relationship and they all need some time to think.

But there’s also this: Usnavi tentatively touching his hand in the early morning when nobody can see, and Vanessa holding him by the hips as she moves past him, and slow, heated kisses with both of them at once in the backroom of the bodega. It’s more of a _not quite yet_ than a _maybe_. Give him time to catch up to where his life is.

It doesn’t make sense that he’s only been here for five and a half months.

There’s a rupture in his internal calendar that begins around the time the Blackout stopped working, when things started going really wrong, when all the months get strange and blurred and twisted. There’s certain things that he can remember facts about without the attached memory of experience like a secondhand story, and others that are just pain without context like a TV with sound but no picture. There’s things out of order or lost forever, and he can never tell if parts of it seem like lifetimes ago or if its barely been a day since they happened. 

What will Ruben remember a year from now?

He draws a box around this as a fixed point, a specificity amidst the chaos: dawn in New York glows along the metal of the fire escapes the day Ruben turns twenty-nine, and there’s a breeze off the Hudson, and Usnavi is holding his hand.

  
*** 

“We miss you being here, cariño,” his ma says while they’re Skypeing.  
  
Ruben says “I miss you all too, Mamá,” because that’s true, and “I like it in the Heights,” because so is that.

“You really do, don’t you?” she says. “Then I am glad you aren’t here with us, but how will you spend your birthday without me there to cook for you? I hope you have plans.”  
  
“I’m still catching up on all the research journals-“ he starts, and she cuts him off with an exasperated noise.  
  
“Oh, that’s so like you. You mustn’t spend the day working. Get some air, see your friends!”  
  
“I already got some air today, Ma,” Ruben says. “I went and got coffee like always.”  
  
“Ah, yes, of course. Well, I suppose that counts. That Usnavi sounds like a good boy.”

Ruben’s smiling when he says “the best,” but he can tell she’s still searching his face trying to gauge how he’s doing, and he knows how she worries about him out here alone, which is what makes him add “and anyway, the Rosarios are doing a thing for their daughter later. I’ll see everyone at that.”

Even if he weren’t already thinking about going, it would’ve been worth it for how happy it makes his mom look.

  
***

His phone dings while he’s sat at his kitchen table with his laptop, deep in all the research he’s missed out on. It's something he’s been working his way through for a couple of months now: there’s an endless reading list of things that changed while he wasn’t there to be involved in them or when his brain was too messed up to even comprehend them. It's not quite the pace he would've worked at once, but he's always been a hard worker so he lets himself take longer over the things he doesn't understand, staring at it from all angles till he finds one that he can see clearly at.

The message is from Vanessa, who’s started texting him at random points during the day, because she says that not having Snapchat is no excuse to miss out on what’s going on. What’s going on right now is a selfie of Vanessa lying facedown on her work desk with an open copy of the company’s magazine draped over her head like a tiny, glossy roof. Ruben’s not entirely sure what mood she’s trying to convey, so he just snaps a picture of himself facedown on the floor with his notebook over his head and hopes that it’s the right answer. 

She sends back an incomprehensible string of emojis, but there’s three different colours of heart in there so probably he did good.

**Ruben:  
** i’m coming to nina’s thing tonight, i decided.  
  
**Vanessa:**  
!!!!  
you need help picking an outfit?  
  
**Ruben:  
** think i’ve got it handled. spoiler alert: it’s gonna be a sweater  
  
**Vanessa:**  
BUT IS IT THE HEATHER GRAY SWEATER OR THE SLATE GRAY SWEATER

 **Ruben:  
** might even bust out the charcoal one

 **Vanessa:  
** jfc chill ruben its dinner at ninas not prom night

  
***

It’s not been any sort of sweater weather for weeks. Ruben only wears thin cotton t-shirts underneath to try and minimise the heat but there’s only so much he can do, so mostly he just makes sure to carry a bottle of water round with him, wears a lot of anti-perspirant and resigns himself to being perpetually sweaty anyway. 

In his wardrobe there are five long-sleeved shirts, in plaid or stripes or dark block color, that have been hanging unworn for weeks waiting for the _some day_ that he keeps promising himself he’ll wear them. Logically, he knows his skin’s not any more on display in one of those, but it seems different somehow. Through the thin material of a shirt he can run a hand up and down his arm and feel each of the intersecting ridges and bumps totally undisguised by a more substantial fabric. It feels like being exposed, even though the only people who would actually touch his arms have seen far more of him than that already.

Why not today?

There was a time when he some days had to take a shower with his clothes on. Tonight he’s standing in a towel in front of his closet, and his hands are unmoving on a sweater while he’s looking at his reflection in the mirror in the back of the door. It only hurts a little to remember the way his body looked before, because it’s so hard to connect himself now with the man that he was when he wore it. This is Ruben now, forever.

There’s a lot he’s learning, slowly but undeniably, from Usnavi and Vanessa and everyone in the barrio. There’s a lot he learnt from Jason and Ian, lessons he might never be able to fully unlearn.

The things Ruben has learnt from Ruben: how to move without pain when your whole upper body is stitches. How to keep going past the thing in his mind that started quietly observingall the substances and weapons and upper-storey windows everywhere he went, a mental catalogue of ways he could just make everything _stop_. How to keep going in general, eyes on the horizon even when it only takes a small misstep to lose half the ground you already covered.

He moves his hand to run it across the row of shirts up on their hangers. Why not today? Back to sweaters tomorrow maybe, but tonight he can do this.  
  
***

Camila greets him with “who’s _this_ handsome young man on my doorstep” when he knocks, fidgeting awkwardly with the cuffs of the dark blue shirt he finally settled on. He doesn’t know if it actually does look good or if she’s just being nice. Maybe he should’ve taken Vanessa up on her offer of fashion assistance.

“Is that Ruben at the door stealing my wife’s affections?” asks Kevin. “Watch yourself, she is a taken woman, you know."

_Turns out that’s not necessarily a barrier_ , Ruben thinks, and then tries really hard to unthink it in case anyone overhears his internal monologue. Daniela passes through the hallway on her way to the kitchen and wolf-whistles at him. He’s already feeling sort of flushed and ridiculous by the time he finds who he’s looking for in the living room, talking to the one person in the room he doesn’t recognise.

“Hey, guys,” he says, slipping in to the edge of their small circle. Nina says a chirpy hi, introducing herself, and he smiles as warmly as he can when he gives his name in return. Hopefully she isn’t offended that he doesn’t lean in to shake her hand or do that odd stranger-hug or whatever the right thing to do when meeting new people is. He just _can’t._ Nina luckily didn’t look like she was moving in for any of those anyway, and only nods acknowledgement. 

Usnavi and Vanessa have been worryingly silent as they look him over, sweaterless and self-conscious despite the fact they’ve seen him _naked_. Usnavi’s face is doing a disconcerting thing where his eyes are trying to to go big with shock and to crinkle up happily both at the same time, but with visible effort he holds back from commenting and just says “hey there.”

“Well, look at you all dressed up,” says Vanessa. “You even put a tie on. Or tried to, at least, did you get bored halfway through?”

Ruben looks down at the messy, loose knot and shrugs. Ties look better that way to him. “It’s on enough.”  
  
“You look good,” she reassures him. “You look really good.” Usnavi nods enthusiastically and there’s a moment where they all just look at each other for slightly too long, but Nina swoops in before it gets actually weird so at least someone in this conversation still has their shit together.

“Ruben,” she says. “I have heard _so_ much about you,” and Vanessa laughs at the added emphasis.

“Welcome to my fuckin’ life,” she says. “You’d think after this long Usnavi would’ve run out of things to say, but nope, still all I get is _Ruben is so cool_ all day.’

Usnavi shrugs happily and doesn’t disagree.

“Jealousy’s an ugly colour,” says Ruben. “Do you want me to teach you how to be cool so Usnavi will like you too?”

“Usnavi’s not the only one I Facetime with, Vanessa,” interjects Nina. “ _I’d even punch your_ ** _mom_** _if she upset him, Nina-”_

Vanessa makes an urgent shushing noise. Ruben is fucking _living_ for her face. “Are you _blushing_ , Vanessa?” he teases.

“It’s warm in here,” she denies. “You shoulda stayed in California, Rosario, quit putting me on blast.”

Nina looks unrepentant. “And as if you’d have to fight my mom about him anyway. Heard about you from her, too,” she explains as an aside to Ruben. “I think she’s aiming all her undirected maternal urges your way now.”  
  
“My entire fridge is full of leftovers,” he agrees, trying to pretend this whole conversation hasn't made him kind of emotional. It’s still unbelievable that people talk about how much they care about him even when he’s not there to hear it. It’s still unbelievable that so many people like him.

“I think she’d have followed me to Stanford to make sure I was taking care of myself otherwise, I probably owe you for taking some of the heat off,” Nina says. 

“Eh, sounds like you’re stuck listening to The Ruben Show broadcasting on all frequencies, how about we call it quits?”

“Fair deal. Hey, so you’re gonna be a teacher, right? Which college are you working at?”  


They fall into easy academia chat, with Usnavi and Vanessa getting bored and talking between themselves just to the side, and Ruben manages to muddle his way through that and then dinner without tripping over his words or crying or forgetting how to breathe, so he thinks he’s doing well.  
  
Once the food’s out of the way, everyone starts drinking and things get louder. It’s still nice, but Ruben’s too warm from his single glass of wine and the body heat of too many people in a small space. All the threads of surrounding voices overlap into a confused tangle, not helped by the fact that stories keep going round which have evidently been retold so many times that the details are no longer considered necessary.

It’s a little overwhelming, and Ruben keeps getting lost trying to follow all these parts of the barrio’s half-explained history, so he excuses himself from talking with Benny and Carla to step out onto the fire escape and re-centre a little. Vanessa catches his eye on the way out and mouths _you okay?_ He nods and holds up a hand like _back in five minutes_. She turns to say something to Usnavi, who leans round like he’s just making sure Ruben’s there before flashing him a thumbs-up and turning back to talk to Camila again.  


Out in the warm summer nighttime, Ruben tunes the sounds out to count his breaths slow and steady, more from habit than necessity. It’s almost been five minutes when a soft voice says, “good view, right?”

Nina is smiling up at him from the window. “You up for company?”  
  
Ruben waves her over and she climbs out and comes to stand near him, resting her crossed arms on the railing in front of her and looking out over the city.

“Everything okay?” she asks lightly. He wonders what she’s heard about him.  
  
“All good,” he assures her. “Just wanted a moment to think.”

Nina nods understandingly. “When I was a kid I didn’t think anyone would ever have a better view than this in the whole world,” she tells him. “I was always sat up here surrounded by notebooks, making plans about where I’d go to school and what I’d study and all the places I’d go and see and the kind of person I’d become. I think I scheduled in every single moment of the first thirty years of my life sat on this fire escape.”

There was a little part of Ruben’s brain that always thought he would’ve made scientific history by now. A Nobel prize or something. He’s lost almost seven years. Almost a quarter of his life. “And was it what you imagined? School. Or California. Or yourself.”  
  
She studies him. She’s got a shrewd stare, Nina does, he can see things moving quickly, but she keeps whatever thoughts are ticking away to herself.

“No,” she answers eventually, and she doesn’t sound disappointed about it. “Not really. How about you?”  
  
Ruben looks out to the GWB while music and voices drift from inside. It’s not a party _for_ him, but it’s his birthday, and if he listens close enough he thinks he can pick out Usnavi’s laugh from the rest of the noise, can almost picture Vanessa’s smirk as she whispers in Usnavi’s ear. He touches his own arm through the fabric of his shirt.

“Not even a little bit,” he says. “Let’s go back in? You don’t wanna miss your own night.”

It’s been a concerted effort to not spend the whole evening with one eye on Usnavi and Vanessa, trying not to be too obvious about the thing between the three of them, though all night he’s been wanting so much to hold both their hands. There's already enough gossip about them, they don’t need the entire barrio having a thousand and one more thoughts about their three-sided little diagram when the only thing they’re even sure of themselves is that they like each other a lot.

But Ruben can’t help the look he feels rising on his face when he sees them standing just like he’d pictured them, Vanessa talking quiet and close to Usnavi as he laughs. And when Ruben walks over to them Usnavi presses their shoulders together for a second too long for it to count as a bump, Vanessa fixes the collar of Ruben’s shirt absent-mindedly with lingering fingers, and Nina Rosario with her sharp sharp eyes is stood right next to him and she seems like the kinda girl to pay attention to details.

“I’m…gonna go find Benny,” she says, not hanging around for their response. Ruben waits till she’s out of hearing range before he turns back to the other two.

“Come round mine after?” he asks. “I-if you want to?”

Usnavi says “yes!” with immediate enthusiasm and Vanessa says “private afterparty? I knew you were on my level, Marcado,” and Ruben’s pretty sure you don’t need to be as observant as Nina to read any of their faces right now.

***

They don’t stay much longer after that. When Vanessa says “we’re gonna call it a night, guys,” both Usnavi and Ruben stand to follow her without even thinking how it’ll look, and the fact that nobody commented on all three of them blatantly leaving together is a concern they can deal with later when they’re not distracted by nervous anticipation.  


It’s almost silent on the short walk back to Ruben’s place, and once the door is shut behind them nobody quite seems willing to make any sort of move. They loiter in the hallway uncertainly, and the other two turn to look at him. 

Oh. They’re waiting for him to call the shots.

“I didn’t celebrate my birthday last year,” he tells them, letting the words spill out fast before he has time to overthink them. “I mean, my mom made an amazing dinner. but I spent half the night throwing it up. I’d only been home a couple months, only been in therapy for a few weeks. There was still the investigation going on, and the media were only just starting to get off my ass trying to get a quote about the whole thing, and I couldn’t go outside without worrying I’d run into _him._ She kept saying _I thought we’d never get to see another birthday_ and I kept thinking, _what’s to celebrate? There’s not much of me left._ ”

They both go to say something but he shushes them. He didn’t bring them here to have a long, depressing backstory talk, he just needed it off his mind before he can deal with what’s next.

It feels like he wakes up nine or ten times a day now, blinking into awareness through the routine while he’s reading a journal or showering or in line to buy groceries and realising that he’s _here_. All this stuff is happening to someone who is _him_. His actions are his own. He keeps realising how long it’s been since he wished Ian had just killed him.

There’s still so much to do, but he knows that he’s alive.

Mostly, Ruben didn't say anything about today because he didn’t actually know how to celebrate a thing so strange and fragile until he was standing on the fire escape at Nina’s, but an added bonus is Usnavi’s face when Ruben says “hard to believe it’s only been a year”. Vanessa looks surprised, but Usnavi looks utterly dismayed.  
  
“Wait, is this a real ass-backwardsy way of saying today’s your birthday?" he asks. “But Ruben, we didn’t do anything for it!”  
  
“We were at a party with everyone we know all evening,” Ruben points out. “That’s the most birthday thing we could do.”  
  
“Not when it’s _someone else’s_ party! We woulda done something for _you_. Okay, we’re getting dinner tomorrow, we can’t just not -”

“Usnavi,” Ruben interrupts, leaning in till he’s close enough that every movement of his mouth is the suggestion of a kiss, in a move he’s shamelessly ripped off of Vanessa. He’s less graceful in his own skin than she is, he’ll never move that smooth, but Usnavi’s face goes gratifyingly glazed over anyway. “It’s still my birthday.”

He pulls back just as Usnavi tries to lean in and catch a real kiss, trying not to look too outwardly smug that he mostly pulled that off.  
  
“I hate it that you taught him that,” Usnavi says to Vanessa, but his face is glowing with two patches of bright, excited pink on his cheeks. She ignores him and twists her hand in Ruben’s tie with a smile, _very_ gently tugging him closer.

“Happy birthday, Ruben,” she says. As Ruben rises up on his toes to kiss her, Usnavi brings his arms round his waist and says “Happy birthday, Ruben,” and it’s a feeling like waking up to realise that this is happening to _him_.


	6. mantener el equilibrio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: set some time after they've all started dating, a companion piece of sorts to waking with the best of routine caffeine team players: bridging a gap between pre- and during-canon ruben and where he's at now. he's trying his best.]

Ruben’s pretty sure his parameters of normal life experiences are so far skewed that they're practically lemniscate, because sometimes he says things like _and then he tried to kill me_ and it comes out sounding basically like _and then I went to the store,_ and the breeziness of it always seems to upset Usnavi and make Vanessa purse her lips disapprovingly. It’s not that it doesn’t bother him too, kinda, but he doesn’t know how to explain it to them that this is how it works:  


There’s a set of scales that he’s weighed things up against. So he almost got offed a few times, and no, he wasn’t a fan. But, they so nearly lost that patient when Jason asked him to help fake his death, and Ruben nearly killed Jason when Ian told him to. He hadn’t been happy about either instance, particularly, but that hadn’t stopped him doing it. Oz’s bouncers with the guns, Ian with the baseball bat, some things were debts that paid themselves back.   
  
It went both ways: there was the dialysis machine, but Ruben had Ian at his mercy less than an hour later and pushing that button was like the electricity was flowing from his own fingers, godlike _. I can get even with you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me right now_.

Jamaica threw the equilibrium off. He knows he didn’t deserve it, not to that extent, not _that_ much. The part of him that can’t stop trying to balance every equation wonders if Usnavi and Vanessa are the universe’s way of resetting things after that, because every day they’re more than he ever hoped he could have.

Now that’s something he won’t ever say to them. If it was the other way round, one or both of them stood in front of him, scattered with scars and saying _it was what had to happen for me to find you_ …it’s not much of a compliment. He adores them both, but he’d give them up in a second to spare them that kind of hurt. Besides, he doesn’t really believe it anyway. For all his brain tries to keep the scales level, _everything happens for a reason_ is a suffocating thought. 

Ruben prefers to think that life is just a cycle of external events and internal decisions: things just happen, and you make choices about what to do next. A burden, for a while - if he hadn’t had that desktop background, if he hadn’t let slip that he knew about the transitions, all the maybes and what ifs. With time, it’s started to be a comfort: he’s had some bad judgement and some huge fuck ups, but at least it wasn’t destiny. Ruben can try to mess up less in future, he can’t fix fate.

Talking to them about Jamaica is still surreal. To stand there as a person and admit aloud that someone made him so much less than that once, an object to be acted upon. Saying it changes the abstract carvings along the lines of his limbs from indefinable images to a real thing that was done to _him_ while he lay blank and unmoving like a canvas slowly painted with unfurling lines of red.

It was wrong, that it happened. He can accept that. He can even accept Usnavi and Vanessa wanting to help him, though he doesn’t know why they do. It sometimes keeps him up all night, listening to their sleep breathing in stereo on either side of him while he wonders what the fuck the catch is. Is it all gonna crash down around him? Probably inevitable, this luck can’t be permanent, but he doesn’t wanna let that thought ruin this: temporary or not, there’s something here he’s trying his best to hold onto.

Which is why, hard as it was to let the two of them in on anything at all, it’s completely unthinkable to tell them about some other stuff. For Ruben’s eyes only, forever. How could he ever look at them and say _I’ve come so close to killing someone before_? How could he say _he hurt me, and I liked it when I got to hurt him back_? Vanessa might talk some smack about punching Jason in the face, but it’s not exactly on the same level as administering involuntary electroshock in a dingy hospital basement, opponent tied down so he can’t get a hit of his own in. They can’t know about that.

Also impossible is the idea of telling them the things he used to want, in case they misread, think that he asked for everything he ended up getting and are disgusted by him because Ruben’s life before them was the fuckin’ monkey paw: make a wish then watch it come true in the worst of ways.

Back at IMH Ruben used to take Jason’s blood to learn the secrets and the stories of his brain and body under a microscope, wishing that he could be something so brilliantly unique that someone - that Jason - would want to do the same to him in return. (But it was Ian who pushed the needle into Ruben’s arm, in the end, and the only story Jason read from off the wall wasn’t even about Ruben at all. Before he was the canvas he was the paint, but he never was the art itself.)  


There wasn’t much of an illusion of independence when they worked together: Jason owned Ruben in actions, could ask him to help kill a patient and to keep his work a secret and to stay for eight hours more. What could Ruben say but _yes_ , wishing it wouldn’t be pointless to add _you could own me again, in any way you want to_. Pin him like a butterfly, held down and spread out, Ruben wouldn’t fight it. (Jason wouldn’t have taken what Ruben was so prepared to give even if he’d ever tried to offer. It was only ever Ian who pinned him to the wall, time and time again. He took nothing but the air from Ruben’s lungs with a choking pressure on his throat, and it’s not that Ruben _wouldn’t_ fight but that he couldn’t.)  
  
He always desperately wished he could be something worthy, to examine or to touch or to take apart. _You gonna be good, Rubes_? Ian had asked in the warehouse, and what could Ruben say but _yes_? He did everything he was told to. Ian saw him body and soul laid bare, ran soft hands across his chest like a lover, left him in pieces. Ruben hadn’t wanted any of it.

Usnavi and Vanessa are good without even having to try. They were built the way they are now, flawed and still lovely. Whenever Usnavi and Vanessa take him apart it’s in the best way, with the careful hands of an expert dismantling a complex piece of machinery, knowing they've the skill to put it back together better than it was before when they’re finished.

They know he had a crush on Jason and they think that he’s the victim in that situation, too. They think that Ruben looked at Jason the way they all seem to see each other now, something sweet and reviving taken and twisted by someone who didn’t know how to appreciate it and his murderous headspace freeloader. They’re wrong. There was nothing cleansing about the way he felt for Jason. He was muddied and messed up from a lifetime of loneliness long before he started at the lab, and he still willingly threw himself into the dirt over and over.

There’s so many things he hasn’t told them yet, that he probably won’t tell them ever. it’s a lot to do with being selfish. He doesn’t want them to leave him when they find out he’s not coming to them with a clean soul. Or worse, they’ll offer comfort, tell him none of this was his fault either. Some things he hasn’t earned his absolution for. Some things he deserved.

But it’s also a bit because he’s been given a chance to do it right this time, shake a little of the dirt off even if there’s a lot of it probably stamped in forever. He’s always wanted so much to be good enough, and he thinks for them he might be able to learn how. He thinks he’s learnt a lot already.


	7. nueve a cinco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: i got two almost identical prompts on tumblr asking for ruben being the one to take care of usnavi or vanessa, which works out nicely: here's the usnavi one, and a vanessa one will be coming up next. it is, as ever, disgustingly sappy. also there's Adult Sexy Content in this so read it with your eyes closed if you are a child). set several months into their relationship]

Sometimes Usnavi thinks he might be boring. It’s Friday. There’s people his age out partying right now. Vanessa, for one, who’s gone out with some girls from work and has been sending pictures to Usnavi and Ruben all night. She’s wearing an indescribable low-cut black dress. All the photos are increasingly blurred and increasingly racy; there’s one shot she sends from the cubicle of a club bathroom that makes Ruben actually drop his phone.

Usnavi and Ruben, on the other hand, spent the night eating takeout on the sofa to a Brooklyn 99 marathon, and are both in jammies by 10pm. Ruben’s not much into the party life - not just because of memories, he says he never liked it before everything anyway - and Usnavi’s had a long week. A long couple of weeks, actually.

It’s never been this hard before, working the bodega. The only other time he’s been this sort of can't-shake-it tired was just after his parents- but even then, he was glad to have so many relatively mindless tasks to do. It was a good way to not think, carefully cleaning already-clean counters and straightening the products on the shelves into obsessive, perfectly parallel formations.

That’s not what’s happening now: he’s not sure when it started but it feels like every night for the past few weeks or so he feels so done long before his shift finishes, trying to muster the energy to do the cleaning and inventory and preparation for the next day. He knows he’s not old, that twenty-five is barely starting his life, and he’s adored this place for years but he can’t shake the restless feeling now whenever he’s at work that he’s missing his chance to do something else.

Do what, though? Vanessa’s working for the fancy fashion magazine and Ruben’s working at the college. It’s not either of their forever plans. Vanessa still doesn’t know what she wants to be, but she likes the freedom of leaving her life unchained from too many concrete decisions, she’s got the confidence to fling herself off cliffs knowing that she’ll fly every time. Ruben was born to change the world, already in the process of manufacturing a new prototype ofhis Blackout drug and they’ve not quite found a way to deal with the Jason of it all that’ll come with actually selling it, but apparently there’s a _lot_ of buzz in the science community already. There’s no doubt that that both of them are going places.

And Usnavi is going…back to work tomorrow, again. His life’s been a series of too-early mornings since he was eighteen years old. It’s Sonny’s last year of high school, so he’s cut his hours to focus on school and college applications and all, and he refuses to start at six thirty. Usnavi doesn’t begrudge him but it means there’s a lot for him to deal with alone. Okay, he doesn’t _need_ to start at six thirty either. But they’ve always opened at that time, and he doesn’t want standards to slip just because he’s a tiny little bit busier. It feels like there’s a bigger problem than just the hours.

There’s too many legacies he’s trying to hold up here, his parents and Abuela and the slowly dying neighborhood. More than half the faces he serves these days he doesn’t recognise, an interchangeable bunch of semi-successful white dudes moved here because it’s cheap but they heard it’s up-and-coming and they wanna get in on it early. They’re mostly polite, though there’s a few of them who he’d be happy to never see again, but even the not-jerks aren’t the sort to stop and get to know whoever’s giving them their coffee. It’s not their home here, just the place they live. 

It’s hard to feel like he’s doing anything an automatic coffee machine couldn’t do faster and without getting tired, which Usnavi really is. He’s so fucking beat that during dinner he started nodding off into his kung pao chicken and almost impaled himself on a chopstick. Ruben had rescued his dangerously-tipping plate and given him a narrow-eyed, searching look that Usnavi had tried to ignore.

They’ve been cuddling on the sofa with his head pillowed on Ruben’s shoulder since they finished eating, and after about the sixteenth time Usnavi jerks awake and nearly headbutts him, Ruben prods him in the cheek and said “time for bed, I think?”  
  
Usnavi mumbles an incoherent agreement but even though he’s barely able to move his arm to brush his teeth, once he’s lying in the dark with Ruben already asleep beside him somehow all the energy he was looking for earlier backflips through the door and dropkicks him directly in the nervous system.

He shifts around as subtly as possible trying to get comfortable, then he cracks each of his knuckles individually, then he tries not to think about how much he wants to crack his knuckles again because otherwise he’ll be stuck doing that in a loop for the next god knows how long, except now the urge is stuck in his mind so _not_ doing it will bother him just as much. Lying on his side like usual is suddenly intolerable so he rolls over to his back, then his stomach, then changes his mind and lies on his back again, then he throws the pillow onto the floor because it feels all wrong and he’s mad at it for not helping him out, here.  
  
“Usnavi,” says Ruben. “What the fuck are you doing?”  
  
Oops. Usnavi hadn’t meant to wake him. “I’m tired,” he explains, though he’s not sure if that’ll make it make sense. He’s started shaking his foot back and forth just to dispel some of the weird build-up but now he can’t seem to stop. It’s probably really irritating. Vanessa always refuses to sleep in the same bed with him when he’s like this.  
  
“Sure seems like it,” says Ruben, raising an eyebrow at Usnavi’s twitching leg.

“Can’t sleep,” Usnavi says, mournfully. This is one of his least favorite moods, whenever it creeps back around. He’s never known what to call it. It’s the feeling of staying up all night and replacing sleep with caffeine. It’s the feeling of still being hyped but way too aware that a crash is about to come any minute. It’s almost like boredom but more visceral, more physical, an itch like someone’s rubbing handfuls of sand into his skin. He _hates_ it.

“I’m _tired_ , Ruben,” he says again, desperately. It’s kinda embarrassing for a guy in his mid-twenties to sound so much like a five year old who got woke up from his nap too early, but whatever. A feeling almost like pain keeps travelling intermittently down his spine and he arches up a little off the bed, trying to make it stop.

Ruben makes a deeply sympathetic sound like he gets it, and then says, “I know something that can help with that, if you’re interested.”

“Hit me with it.”

In one of those sudden, startling moments of forwardness that he sometimes springs on them, Ruben rolls into Usnavi, sliding both hands down the back of his pajama pants to grab his ass and pull him into a deep and fucking _filthy_ kiss. Usnavi can feel Ruben’s dick twitch against him even through their sleep clothes and his own responds similarly, so that he can’t help but grind a little into it. **  
**

“Dios mío, Ruben,” he says breathlessly when they break apart. “I mean, _awesome_ , but that did the exact opposite of making me sleepy.”

“It will,” says Ruben. “Trust me. I’m a doctor.” And he slides down Usnavi’s body to settle between his legs.

***

If Usnavi thought his nerves were all singing before that's nothing compared to how this feels, but it’s nothing so discordant as insomnia: Ruben’s hands holding onto his hips and Ruben’s mouth around his dick and his _tongue,_ god, it’s that clear and ringing feeling like hitting all the right notes in a harmony.

Usnavi’s learnt a thing or two since they’ve been dating but Ruben is no question the best of them at this, and it’s only made better by how he seems to like giving it as much as Usnavi likes being on the receiving end. Even in the dark bedroom Usnavi can see how hard Ruben is through his boxers, and the way his cheeks have flushed with excitement. Usnavi tries to hold himself back from pushing too much, but Ruben just slips his hands underneath Usnavi to pull him upwards and take him deeper, almost all the way down, hollowing his cheeks with a nearly-defiant set to his eyebrows like he wants to prove he’s up to the challenge.

They’d been extremely careful with Ruben when this whole thing had first started, soft touches and light hands, and even then they’ve had some seriously unpleasant surprises while they figure out  what really isn’t okay. But they’ve also had some very good surprises, like that maybe careful isn’t always the way to go, like the time Vanessa forgot herself and pulled hard on Ruben’s hair while he was going down on her like she does with Usnavi. Ruben had made a shattered sound and come immediately, completely untouched. So _that_ whole vibe is something they’ve been exploring, albeit very tentatively.

Usnavi winds his fingers through Ruben’s hair now right down at the roots, and doesn’t quite pull but tightens his hands into fists. The drawn-out humming noise Ruben makes in response feels beyond amazing, and Usnavi’s this close to closing his eyes and revelling in the sensation but he’s glad he didn’t because then he’d have missed the sight of Ruben slipping his hand into his own boxers with another muffled whine. God.

“Ruben,” Usnavi says. “Can I see you?”

Never _I want to see you_ and definitely not ever _let me see you_ , this is always something Usnavi _asks_ for, because no matter how much fun they’re having sometimes the answer is no. But Rubenpulls off and strips off his shirt without hesitation and even though Usnavi’s probably never entirely going to stop noticing the uncountable little white paths that wind all round his skin, he’s mostly just thinking that Ruben is fucking beautiful always but these sudden moments of unselfconsciousness are something else entirely.

That’s why when he’s watching this - Ruben taking off his boxers, sitting in front of Usnavi and touching himself almost shyly at first, a ghosting stroke before he takes a proper grip and writhes a little with the feeling - there’s something about it that Usnavi can’t get enough of. It’s hot as hell when Vanessa does it - it’s hot as hell when Vanessa does anything, to be honest - but with Ruben, Usnavi’s into it to a point where its probably almost weird. He has been from the start. It’s about the confidence it takes to do such a private thing while someone watches. It’s about Ruben actually making himself feel good without second-guessing it.

It’s also about Ruben’s clever, pretty hands and the curve of his dick and the way he doesn’t just touch himself, he moves his whole body into pleasure with his hips and his legs and the hungry, wanting look on his face. 

“You’re so gorgeous,” Usnavi says, and Ruben shudders happily, spreads his legs further apart and moves faster. “You’re _unbelievable_.” He really is, and it’s almost unbearable for Usnavi to watch this when nobody’s touching him. When he goes to reach for his own dick Ruben leans over and gently moves his hand away, eyes intense, looking at Usnavi through his charcoal lashes. 

“Oh, you fuckin’ _tease_ ,” Usnavi says, delighted, “and here I thought you were gonna be nice to me.”

“I am being nice to you,” says Ruben, his voice dark and dancing. “You like it when I do this.”

“I do,” Usnavi agrees. “I like it even more when you suck me off at the same time. Just a suggestion.”  


Ruben makes a non-committal sound and moves so he’s hovering above Usnavi on his knees and one hand, lips almost on him but not quite. He flickers a glance up at Usnavi’s face.  
  
“Please?” asks Usnavi. He ain’t above begging if he has to, but Ruben gives in immediately and Usnavi’s lost in the heat of his mouth, and the sight of him pushing into his own hand desperately with the same rhythm, and the indistinct little keening noises he’s making - fuck, he’s so fucking _hot_ , this isn’t gonna last long at all.  
  
“Ruben,” he gasps, “I’m gonna come, fuck, god, _yes_ , how are you so _good_ at this-“ and then he’s there and Ruben keeps going til he’s done, one last swipe of his tongue as he pulls off setting shivers through Usnavi’s oversensitised system. Ruben straddles his legs, leaning forwards, and it only takes a few fast and frantic strokes before he slows down and finishes hot all over Usnavi’s stomach and his own fingers.

They stay there just looking at each other in heavy breathing silence until Ruben moves his hand and grimaces at the stickiness. He rolls himself off the bed and heads presumably to the bathroom.  
****

Usnavi shamelessly eyes Ruben’s ass as he leaves but once the door closes behind him a sudden sleepiness rushes through him. No trace of the pseudocaffeinated jitters now, just a fuzzy light lifting feeling and, juxtaposed, the heaviness of his eyelids. He lets them fall closed, probably looking like a mess sprawled out naked and still covered in come but he doesn’t care right now. Ruben breathes a laugh when he comes back in.

“Alright, _Doctor Marcado,_ don’t be so fuckin’ smug about it,” Usnavi grumbles, wriggling slightly as Ruben swipes a damp cloth over his stomach and hits a ticklish point.“You were right. Hey, can I get that on a repeat prescription or something? Because damn.”

“I don’t know about that, I’m worried you’ll develop a dependency,” says Ruben, drying Usnavi off with his discarded t-shirt and crawling back into bed. Usnavi’s definitely about to say something witty in response but he loses it in a yawn, and loses the end of the yawn in the blurring black edges of falling asleep.

***

Usnavi sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and wakes up still exhausted in an empty bed, which is weird, and it’s incredibly bright outside which is weirder. 

It takes way too long for his eyes to actually remember out how to read the clock but when he does - fuck! - its seven fifteen. Usnavi is so, _so_ late. This never happens. It’s long ingrained in him to wake up early and he sets two alarms every day just in case and if nothing else Ruben surely would’ve got him up, but no time to worry about it now. He drags himself out of bed feeling like dead weight as he gets dressed in record time. Worst start to the day. God knows where his hat is, he’ll have to go without it, and he doesn’t have time for breakfast and probably one of the jumped-up dudes in a pretending-to-be-expensive suit has left a bitchy note on the door because Usnavi wasn’t there to give him his soulless _café_ for his soulless commute to his soulless job on time. He’s still so tired: his vision greys out at the edges as he runs down the back stairs but only a tiny bit so it’s not a problem.

Usnavi tumbles through the back entrance haphazardly, hoping like hell he left the keys to the grate under the counter when he has the truly unsettling experience of seeing a small latino dude with a beard and a flat cap already stood behind the counter. He almost trips over himself, wondering if he’s somehow already opened the store and _wait_ _is he a ghost now?!_  except then his eyes actually focus properly and it's Ruben with his cute, closed-mouth smile that scrunches his nose up just slightly. Usnavi is a. relieved that he’s not having an out-of-body experience and also b. inexplicably a bit turned on by Ruben wearing his hat? That’s one to put a pin in for later.

“Hey, hermoso, what’s this? You trying to steal my identity?” he says as he approaches, tapping the brim of the cap upward so he can see Ruben’s eyes better. “Always knew you were up to no good, Marcado.”  
  
“You caught me,” says Ruben. “I only want you for your bodega. Didn’t you get my note?”

“What note?”

“The one I left on the table by your bed, explaining that I was gonna hold down the store till Sonny came in and that _you_ were gonna stay in bed and sleep in on a weekend for once in your goddamn life.” Ruben puts a hand to Usnavi’s cheek, brushing a thumb over one of the dark circles under Usnavi’s eyes with an unhappy look. “You’ve been running yourself into the ground. Vanessa’s worried too.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Usnavi insists. “Never better. On top of my game.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” says Ruben. “But you’re not wearing an undershirt.”  
  
Usnavi blinks down at his chest, bare underneath his open shirt. It’s true. “…I feel like this is really gonna undercut any argument I try and make now.”

“Yep,” says Ruben. “Look, Sonny’s in at eight, and it’s not even busy. Please just go back up? I’ll come join you when I’m done.”

Usnavi can’t resist that _please_ and he’s pretty sure Ruben knows it. He doesn’t argue, but he does take out his phone to snap a quick picture of Ruben in his hat before kissing him on the cheek and turning to leave. Except, wait-

“Hey, but can I ask, _why_ the hat? Hoping customers wouldn’t realise you ain’t me?”

“No,” Ruben says. “Though I’m pretty sure some of them we could just draw a beard on Vanessa and they wouldn’t notice the difference, so that probably happened at least once.” He hesitates. “…Promise not to laugh if I tell you?”

“Of course.”  
  
“Well, uh. I wanted to let you rest but the whole customer thing, it made me - uhm, not stressed, exactly. Exposed? Maybe? People are one thing when I’m in school, class isn’t so one-to-one and even when I’m dealing with students alone it’s fine because I mostly know what I’m talking about. It’s been a long time since I worked a job like this. And I always sucked at customer jobs even when I was a teenager.” He pulls the hat down a little lower. “It felt like an extra layer of protection, I guess. From people looking at me. And it reminded me of you, so it sort of made it easier to channel your vibe when I was wearing it. I know that’s dumb.”  
  
“It’s not dumb at all,” murmurs Usnavi. He can’t speak any louder round the big, stupid, glowing feeling in his chest. “But if you don’t feel comfortable-“  
  
“Usnavi, I’ve been here all morning, I can manage another half hour,” says Ruben, exasperated. “And if you don’t leave now I’m gonna have to go cook up a of sample of Blackout, if that’s what it takes to make you slow down. Don’t think I won’t. I can be _very_ unethical.”  
  
“Fine, fine, I’m going,” Usnavi gripes.

***

**usnavi:  
** \- ruben stole my store from me  
\- he wont let me go to work

**vanessa:  
** \- good

 **usnavi:  
** \- ¿betrayal??¿¡from all sides!?  
\- he also took my hat  
\- [imintoit.jpg]

 **vanessa:  
** \- god hes so cute  
\- once i stop dying ima come over and kiss all up on both of your dumb faces

 **usnavi:  
** \- idk if i wanna be kissed by a TRAITOR

 **vanessa:  
** \- shut up  
\- and get some fucking rest  
\- you look worse than i do and my body is still 70% tequila rn

 **usnavi:  
** \- you cant even see me??

 **vanessa:  
** \- yeah but am i wrong tho  
\- now pls be quiet im so hungover and youre so loud  
\- te amo x

 **usnavi  
** \- <3 x

***

So maybe he’s kinda glad to skip work after all because once Vanessa stops texting back, Usnavi spends the next twenty minutes lying face-down on his bed and half-dozing warmly in a sunbeam of morning light. It’s nice. He can’t be bothered to get undressed. 

When Ruben comes back he vaguely hears him say _oh, Usnavi,_ fond and troubled. Usnavi raises a hand in greeting and lets it flop heavily back onto the bed because it was taking far too much effort to hold it up. He can feel Ruben untying his shoes for him and slipping them off, before the mattress sinks under his weight. Usnavi lets himself roll into Ruben’s waiting arms with a contented, sleepy sigh.

Ruben draws incomprehensible shapes against the back of Usnavi’s neck with his fingers in that thoughtful, distracted way Usnavi loves, definitely gearing up to say something.

“What’s going on, Usnavi?” he finally asks. “This isn’t like you. We really are worried about you. It’s been weeks, we were hoping it was just a temporary thing but…”  
  
Oh, he hates that they’ve noticed enough to actually sit and talk about it. Really he should know better by now: Usnavi has never, ever been good at keeping things on the DL, no matter how subtle he thinks he’s being.

“Things have been busier,” he says. “With Sonny working less and all. And the store’s not doing great. But it’s fine, honestly.”

He’s not trying to downplay it, he gets why they’re concerned. But it’s not the worst thing, if Usnavi’s a little bit worn out, he can handle it.  
  
The expression on Ruben’s face suggests otherwise. “You could hire someone else. Or cut back your hours. You’re gonna burn out if you keep working like this, you’re already almost there and I’ve seen enough of that at college - when I was there and as a teacher - to know that’s not a quick road to come back from. You don’t need to push yourself like this.”

Usnavi snorts. “Ruben, I’m barely breaking even. There’s not much _choice_. Honestly, even if Sonny still wanted to work weekdays I couldn’t afford to pay him, and now the fridge needs replaced and the grate’s fucked again and…it’s just pretty much over, I think. Not for a month, a couple months, maybe, but soon. It’s been a long time coming.”

He hasn’t properly admitted that even to himself til now, but as soon as he says it there’s some strange kind of relief, like he’s just been waiting to acknowledge the inevitable.

“Jesus, Usnavi. I didn’t know things were that bad,” Ruben says. “Why didn’t you _say_ something? If you need money, I could -“

“No,” says Usnavi, and ignores Ruben starting to protest. “ _No_. You might have savings but you ain’t got the Blackout dollar yet, you're not a millionaire. And honestly, it’s a lost cause. It’s fine. You’re right, I should’ve said. I just…I hate that it’s such a, an undignified way for it to go. Everything all falling apart slowly and everyone all leaving it behind. My- um, my parents would’ve been sad, I think. To see it get like this.”

Ruben tightens his hold on Usnavi a little and presses one leg between Usnavi’s til he shifts and they’re completely wrapped around each other, but he doesn’t say anything. That’s fine. Usnavi doesn’t need much encouraging to talk anyway, he’s been ignoring this too long and now he’s got the chance to think aloud he’s not gonna miss it.

“They worked so hard for this store. Up and open at six thirty every day ever since I can remember. We never had much money but they loved every bit of this place and it all showed. I done my best to keep things running like how they had it but it’s at least a two person job. And its not as…satisfying, as it used to be. It’s hard to run a place with love when everything’s busted and you’re mostly serving strangers who’re lowkey waiting for the place to get turned into a Starbucks. That’s why I get tired more now, I guess.”

He sighs, disconsolate. “It’s just weird to think that it’s ending. And it woulda been nice to finish on a high note, for Mamá and Pai, and I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about any of it. So…that’s what’s going on.”

“I know I didn’t know your parents,” says Ruben quietly, sounding like he’s choosing his words very carefully. “But I think they’d be very proud of you. How could they not be? Look at you.”

Usnavi flushes at the earnestness. “I hope so. I tried to be the kind of person they raised me to be. I mean, I’m just the bodega guy, I know it’s not like, inventing a life-changing drug -“

“Don’t do that,” says Ruben sharply. “Don’t you _dare_. You work harder than anyone I’ve ever known. And don’t act like this is less important than what I do. The jerks you serve now might not see it but do you know how many of the stories I’ve heard from people who’ve been here for years that start with _I was at the bodega and -,_ how much of their lives happened with this place right at the centre? Do you know how much of a difference it made to me? You changed _my_ fucking life. You and Vanessa both, but it’s all because I met you and you were so kind to me even though I was a total stranger and you didn’t have to be. You’ve never needed to put so much into what you do. You just do it because that’s how you are. And that’s amazing, and your parents _would_ be proud, and I’m proud of you too.”

Ruben’s out of breath at the end, and hides his face against Usnavi’s neck like he surprised himself with the outburst.  
  
Usnavi is not crying.

He _isn’t_.

“I am sorry, though. About the store,” adds Ruben, looking up again and thumbing a tear off Usnavi’s cheek.

“It’s okay,” says Usnavi, a little damply. “I knew it was gonna happen sooner or later, even back when I decided to not go to DR and stay here. Even almost sold it once, probably a couple months before you showed up. Had people looking around, got an offer and everything. But I turned it down last-minute.”

“What made you stay?”

Pacencia y fe _:_ both times he nearly left, it was seeing that grate with Abuela’s face smiling out in spraypaint and somehow knowing he wasn’t finished with this place yet. Playa Rincón will be there in a year, in ten years. The rest of NYC or the world or wherever he’s gonna end up could wait too. There were things still to be done, even if he hadn’t found out what they were at that point.

Patience. Faith. He feels like maybe Abuela knew, one last thing she did for him to make sure his life kept going down the right path.  
  
“Waiting for you,” he answers, and Ruben’s breath catches.

“Sorry I took so long,” he says. 

Usnavi yawns in response, which isn't what he meant to say but he can't help it.  
  
“Please sleep, Usnavi,” says Ruben, with a long and pleading kiss.  
  
“Okay,” he replies, and he really does try, lying against Ruben and closing his eyes. But Usnavi can’t help it if he’s got too many thoughts keeping him awake, and right now he’s thinking a lot.

He knows Ruben worries that he asks too much of Usnavi and Vanessa, with the flashbacks and the triggers and the days where he just hurts in a million ways with no real reason for it. And yeah, it’s a lot. It can be exhausting, it’s just fucking awful to watch, but it doesn’t feel like an unbalanced deal at all because Ruben puts his all into everything he gives back to them.

Ruben’s been through the worst stuff he can imagine and still gets that sad, worried little crease between his eyes just because Usnavi has been kind of tired for a couple weeks. Ruben invented a drug that, when he described it to the head of some big fancy science facility while looking for funding, Usnavi could hear her on the other end of the call say _holy shit, are you for_ ** _real?!_** , and he still genuinely doesn’t seem to see anything less important about what Usnavi does. Whenever they’re feeling bad, Ruben tangles all his limbs around them like his hands aren’t enough to keep them safe from whatever’s getting them down but he’ll be a full body shield if he has to. He’ll kiss Usnavi hard and generous like it might let him leave a little of his own life lingering on Usnavi’s lips so that he’s got some spare for emergencies. 

It’s so much.

“I love you,” Usnavi says. Ruben makes a soft startled noise.

He didn’t realise he was gonna say it, didn’t even really realise he felt it. But everything about Ruben’s been catching him by surprise since the beginning so why break tradition now? And he meant it, there’s no doubt about that. He kisses Ruben’s forehead.

“I love you,” he says again, because he wants it to be on purpose this time.

Ruben doesn’t say it back, but he takes Usnavi’s hand and pulls it to his chest where they’re never supposed to touch, his own resting on top of it, and Usnavi can feel the words in the heartbeat under his palm.


	8. permitir que el amor florece

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: this functions as an immediate overlap/sequel with the last chapter so be sure to read that first. also definitely not safe for work, and if you were wondering "can this ship maintain the intense fluff level while also factoring in a real D/s vibe" then why you even doubting of course the answer is yes. also if you wanna get on the vibe i had writing this chapter, i listened to massive attack's 'psyche' at least 20 times.]

It reminds her a litle of the time just after the De la Vegas passed away. Not the immediate searing aftermath where Usnavi was a wreck and all the rest of them would sometimes be seized with uncontrollable fear in the middle of the day, sending frantic texts to their parents just to make sure they were still there.

The illness came on fast. They had been so _alive_ just a short while before

Not that part, but the part where weeks had turned into months and Vanessa, Benny and Nina would gather in the kitchen at the Rosario’s and desperately try to come up with ways to make Usnavi smile again. It had been terrifyingly long since they’d seen him happy (he’d been so alive just a short while before).

He came back to them eventually, of course, beautiful and brighter than ever. But now: her motor-mouth boy Usnavi all quieted down, blinking slow and sleepy in the middle of the day, his already clumsy hands dropping things more often like he just forgets he’s holding them, standing too still in front of shelves with his face distant and not doing whatever it was he went over there for. Every time it happens she catches troubled eyes with Ruben behind Usnavi’s back and knows he’s seeing it too. They talk and talk when Usnavi isn’t there and their only solution so far is _wait it out_ , and that’s not working great for them.

It’s a familiar feeling and she hates it. The world keeps throwing invisible opponents at the places Vanessa is most vulnerable. She can’t break down the wall around whatever Usnavi feels about his parents or whatever’s going on now, she can’t seal up the hairline fractures that Ruben too often cracks along. Vanessa’s not a patient girl, Vanessa’s not a girl who deals well with feeling useless.

The things aimed at her directly are so much smaller. If she could only trade - though she’s scared sometimes she wouldn’t be as strong as them under the same circumstances. She’s had her knocks, but comparatively it’s nothing. 

That’s why she doesn’t mention it straight away, a barely-even-anything problem. A minor annoyance at worst. She can handle it, and they’ve got enough to deal with.  


**[Unknown number]**  
Hi, Nessa! I’ve been trying to get in touch, your mom gave me your new number. Why didn’t you tell me you’d changed it? Anyway, I’m back in town again last weekend of the month, so let me take you out for dinner. My treat! You can bring that boy if you’re still dating him. - Dad.

***

“I really wish you’d warned me before you gave him my number,” she says to her mom, who makes a semi-apologetic face as she puts their coffee on the table.  
  
“Sorry. I know. I couldn’t come up with a good reason not to fast enough,” she explains. “But…he _is_ your dad. You do have to spend time with him at some point.”  
  
“Easy for you to say, you ain’t gotta do it,” Vanessa mutters. “Why should I waste an evening on him?”

“Because he’s your father. God knows I’m not denying he’s a pendejo, but you don’t want to look back one day and wish you’d spent more time with the people you love.“

Vanessa doesn’t know how to say that she doesn’t think she loves him. _But he_ ** _is_** _your dad_ always seems to be the counter to all her arguments, even from Dani or Nina. Why does family come with this obligation to feel a certain way? She barely knows the guy, and what she does know of him is kind of douchey.

Maybe she’s just heartless. There’s people out there whose dads are _awful_ , and they still love them.

She manages to love her mom, for all the troubled water between them. It took some time to fix the rift, after she first moved out, and even now she only visits once a month or so. It hasn’t changed some things: the crosswires of communication where they always seem to spark friction, the constant promises subsequently smashed in another topple off the wagon.  
  
Four weeks sober, thanks to AA, and from the looks of it still going strong, but Vanessa can’t say she’s got faith that this will go any longer than any of the other one-month-cleans over the past couple years. Still, her mom is really trying, and recently Vanessa’s been learning a new sort of appreciation for the resilience of life-torn weary people to just keep standing up again. Vanessa’s been learning to breathe through the anger instinct before she lets it guide her voice.

There’s nothing of her mom in her relationship with her dad. None of the midnight screaming fights and the drink and the borrowing money and that clawing dependence like something from the ocean depths grabbing her ankle as she swims.  
  
There’s also not the memory of him cussing out the first boy to ever make her cry after she got cheated on, or of the cheap and messy-looking homemade birthday cakes with her name iced on in wobbly purple cursive, or of the unending attempts from both of them to heal over the hurts of their life together.Her mom has always tried, Vanessa’s been coming to realize. It doesn’t erase the things she did that messed Vanessa up, but it makes it easier to see where they might go from here, their bridges building slowly. Her dad is just some dude who rocks up a couple times a year and takes her out for a mediocre dinner while ignoring everything she says. She could find ten of him on any street in this city.

***

Some things aren’t noticeable til they’re gone, like the permanent little crease that had taken up residence between Usnavi’s eyebrows even while he slept. Things like the tight fear in her chest fading out, a tangle working itself loose as she watches him now, napping on his sofa while Ruben makes them dinner. Usnavi’s face is soft, peaceful. He looks like how he’s meant to.

He’s going to have to sell the bodega, and with it his apartment too. No wonder this whole thing reminded her of when he lost his parents: their memory is embedded deep in the structure of this place and he has to say goodbye again. But Vanessa and Ruben know what’s going on now, they’ve made him agree to cut down his hours, they’ve told him they’ll help him find his way when he steps into the world outside the store. Even though he’s still too tired, it seems like something’s helping. Vanessa runs her hand across Usnavi’s cheek, and he makes an incoherent sound, but doesn’t wake up.

Ruben comes to the door of the living room and watches them, drying his hands on a towel. There’s too much unvoiced feeling suspended in this one silent moment of all three of them. It’s almost suffocating. She accepts the reprieve when Ruben tilts his head towards the kitchen and she follows him to a less emotion-heavy room.

Usnavi told Ruben that he loved him. Ruben doesn’t know she knows. She’s not sure what to make of it, only that maybe that too is why Usnavi looks more like himself these past few days - he runs on love like fuel - and she’s so indescribably grateful for it that she wants to kiss Ruben all over til he’s breathless. She wants to do that most of the time anyway, but even more now.

She settles for just one, a thankful press of lips to the corner of his mouth.

“He seems happier, right?” Ruben asks her, hopeful. “I think he does. When he’s awake, I mean, right now he mostly just seems kind of drooly.”

“He definitely seems happier,” she agrees, and bumps their shoulders, their hips, against each other. “Good work, Marcado.”

Ruben lights up with pride. “I didn’t actually do a lot. I pretty much just gave him a blowjob then stole his hat.”

“Well, apparently you give blowjobs good enough to cure depression. Forget Blackout, you should market _that_.” She drops into a chair and rests her chin on her fists.

“I’m not giving up science to become a prostitute, Vanessa,” he says, turning to prod something in a pot with a wooden spoon.

“Oh, yeah, that is basically what that would be, ain't it? My bad.”

She watches him licking the spoon and muttering to himself with dancing hands about what seasonings he needs to add. His sleeves are rolled up. He seems content.

It must be hard to deal with normal problems when your benchmark for a bad day is torture, she thinks. Everything so elevated to maximum threat level in his brain. Or maybe it’s a whole lot easier. Forgetting your keys or missing the train probably doesn’t seem like such an issue next to that.

“Hey, Ruben,” she says, hoping this isn’t gonna be another bomb she’s about to set off. “Why d'you never talk about your dad?”

Ruben just gives her a curious look. “Nothing to talk about, mostly. I haven’t seen him since I was seven.”

“Oh.”

“Ma tried to contact him for my funeral,” he says, entirely casual like that’s something people always say about their own lives. “But, no luck. Not surprised, after that long.”

He doesn’t sound bitter the way Vanessa thinks she would - she already _is_ bitter, and at least her dad shows up every so often, not that she ever actually wants him to. “Don’t that…bother you?”

“That he didn’t go to my funeral? Not really. It would’ve bothered me more if he’d showed up after two decades and pretended to mourn a kid he never knew.”

“No, I mean that he wasn’t around in general?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wanted a father, but he clearly wasn’t cut out for it, so if it’s a choice between that _specific_ dad or nothing? Eh. And I always had my mom.” He tips some salt into his hand then carefully adds it in pinches, dusting the excess off on his pants when he’s done. 

Ruben never really does subscribe to usual conventions. Probably that’s the reason why she asks “can I tell you a thing if you promise not to tell Usnavi?”

Ruben looks instantly wary. “It’s not a _big_ thing,” she clarifies.

“I’m not gonna promise anything before I know what it is,” he says. “But you can tell me anyway if you like.”

“My dad text me,” she says. “Wants to meet up for dinner at the weekend.”

“Ah. Your tone implies you’re not over the moon about this?”

“I dunno. He’s a tool. But only like, a low grade one, as far as these things go. Mostly we got nothing to do with each other, but he can’t even commit properly to being an absent father so like twice a year he’ll try to buy my forgiveness with dinner while saying passive-aggressive things about my mom.”

Ruben snorts. “Sounds like father of the century. At least mine’s consistent instead of coming around to mess up my head every six months.”

“I should see him though,” she says. “Shouldn’t I?”

“Do you want to?”

“Not especially. But I should.”

Ruben gets that blank and baffled _wait do normal people do this thing differently_ face. “Why?”

“Because he’s my dad,” she says.

“…So?”

“So…he’s my dad?”

“What difference does that make? Dads are just people. Not always good ones.”

That’s what Vanessa’s been _saying!_ She’ll still play devil’s advocate for herself, though, can’t help but test the boundaries. “He ain't a bad guy. Just kind of a lousy father. He could be so much worse.”

“Isn’t that what people always say to justify a shitty situation?”

Yeah, like year after year slicing her pay in half for her mom with a crawling ache to leave under her skin because _it could be worse_ : her mom was just sad, not dangerous, and all the cutting things she said were accidental like being caught under shattering glass instead of directed cruelty.

And it still sucked, didn’t it?

“It’s up to you,” Ruben says. “But you shouldn’t ever feel you _have_ to do things for people just because they haven’t treated you as bad as they could have, that’s all I’m saying.”

She didn’t need Ruben’s permission to know she could just back out. The fact he’s on her side makes her feel better anyway.

“I’m gonna do it,” she decides, and he crinkles his eyebrows at her. “No, you’re right, I don’t owe him shit. It’s just that it’s either I do dinner and then I don’t have to think about him for another six months, or I don’t and then I hear about it endlessly from everyone with an opinion on how to family. This is for my sake, not his.”

“Okay,” he says, and she’s glad he doesn’t argue. “But can I ask why you don’t want Usnavi to know?”

“He usually comes with me. Moral support. But he hates it and he’s got enough stress going on right now, and if I told him he'd insist, so.”

“Vanessa,” Ruben says carefully. “You know your stuff is important too, right?”

“It’s not _as_ important,” she answers. “It’s not on level with having no parents at all or, y’know, your everything. Like, relatively speaking, this is hardly even a thing.”

He frowns deeply at her. “I’m not sure we _should_ speak relatively. Our scale is kind of messed up. If it makes you feel bad, even a little bit, it’s important.”

Vanessa shrugs uncomfortably.

“I could come with you,” he says, turning away and straightening all the spice jars to busy his hands. “I-I mean, only if you wanted, and I don’t know how you’d want to explain about Usnavi, or if I’d even be any use, but just, if you didn’t want to go by yourself, I could…do that.”

So much for escaping from emotions in this room, there’s such a twisting feeling in her heart right now. They both know he’d hate doing this as much as Usnavi does. “I don’t wanna drag you into my stupid family drama.”

 _“_ Tu drama es mi drama,” he replies. ‘I want to help, if you want me there. Just say the word.”

“Fine. Ruben Marcado. Will you do me the honor of spending an uncomfortable evening in a kind of decent restaurant with me and my asshole dad?”

“Yes, a thousand times yes,” he says, dryly. “I thought you’d never ask.”

***

It was decided fairly into dating early that, since Ruben was coming in solo to an established couple, they didn't want him to feel like they were the real relationship with Ruben as an added extra. That’s how the individual date nights with him became a regular thing. It comes in useful now, a reason to go out alone without having to explain about Vanessa’s dad to Usnavi.

“Oh, _wow_ , hello,” says Ruben as he opens the door to let Vanessa into his apartment. “You look good.”

Usnavi is there, clattering around in the kitchen listening to Calle 13. She yells a greeting and he returns it then falls straight back to rapping along top volume without missing a step. It’s such a relief that he’s coming back to them.

“I’m nearly ready. Come through.”

She lounges against the wall of the bedroom while Ruben scrutinizes his reflection. He does his top button up, then undoes it again and nods decisively at himself with a look on his face like he’s about to go to war, not dinner.

“Oh, _snap_ , would you look at that,” comes a voice from the doorway. Usnavi is leaning into the room with an adoring look on his face. He reaches out to Vanessa as he enters the room and twirls her like they’re dancing, then takes Ruben’s hand and brings it to his lips. “Mi hermoso novio, mi preciosa novia _,_ how does one boy get so lucky twice over? You both look stunning. Behave yourselves tonight.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” asks Vanessa

“Well then, at least make sure to tell me all the sordid details. Gotta get that gossip. I’ll leave you to it.”

They both kiss Usnavi goodbye and he walks to the door backwards, blowing kisses, full of sunshine. Ruben shoots a look at Vanessa once they hear him leave the apartment.

“We’ll tell him,” she reassures him. “It’s just that you know how he cares way too hard about everything, and he’s doing so much better right now. We can do something nice afterwards so it counts as real date night if that makes you feel less bad.”

“Right,” Ruben says dubiously. It’s a mild evening and he’s looking lovely in a light grey button down but he pulls at it unhappily. “Maybe I should wear a sweater.”

“Are you nervous?” Vanessa asks. “Don’t be. It ain't like he’s gonna be a big part of your life. And his opinion on my men means jack-shit, he don’t even like Usnavi.”

Ruben scowls ferociously. “What? Why? _How?”_

“Because Usnavi hasn’t moved in with me, and also because he don’t think working a bodega counts as a real job.”

“Well. _That’s_ fucking stupid. And I thought living alone was mainly your choice?”

“It was. My dad thinks it's just he wasn’t manly enough about how he asked, or something. _All girls want a man who can provide, Usnavi, she’ll give in once you prove that you can take care of her.”_

Ruben makes what can only be described as a yuck-face, complete with tongue sticking out. ”Oh, ew. I’m pretty sure _she’ll give in_ should never be any part of relationship advice.”

“Right? So it’s dumb to be nervous. He’s a jerk.”

“I can’t help it, I have this pathological need for people to like me. Even when they’re jerks.” He looks contemplative. “Maybe especially when they’re jerks.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re gonna get an unhealthy crush on my dad? Because that’s a dealbreaker, babe,” she says. He shoves her gently, she shoves him back. “Come on. Time to face doom.”

***

Doom is overstating it. Mostly it goes exactly as she expected.

Her dad is already at the restaurant when they enter and stands up from the table to greet them. She lets him kiss her cheek.

“Hi.”

“Hey, Nessa. Hey…is that Usnavi?” her dad squints at Ruben. “I never can tell which boy you’ve brought with you.”

Like she’s not been with the same guy for almost three years, but whatever. “No. Dad, this is Ruben.

“Hi, Ruben. Ben García.” He holds out his hand to shake and Ruben just looks at it in panic. _Shit_ , she’d totally forgot, and she can’t think of a smooth cover before her dad raises his eyebrows and pulls his hand back saying, “or not, I guess,” under his breath. Ruben’s mouth twists worriedly.

“Ruben’s a doctor,” Vanessa says as they sit. She hates having to use that as a bargaining chip to ease the tension but it’s all she can think of. It works on one side at least, if the approving expression on her dad’s face is anything to go by.

“Really? What kind of doctor?”

Ruben rubs a hand across his arm, staring hard down at the table. It was a bad idea, bringing him along. Vanessa tries to telepathically radiate an apology.  “Chemist,” he says, whisper-quiet, then clears his throat. “I’m a chemist. Mostly teaching at community college but I'm in lab with my own research part-time too."

“That’s very impressive,” her dad says, and Ruben just nods. 

***

Pretty much the evening stays at that level of shitty.It’s nothing. It’s no big deal. It’s not your parents dying or your father not even showing up when the world thinks you’re dead. It’s not the people she used to know who came to school with bruises round their arms, the people who spoke with someone else’s voice to call themselves worthless even years after they got out.

It’s only her saying that yeah, she still works in fashion and her dad saying “I always knew the looks would get you far! She gets that from my side,” he tells Ruben, who laughs a little uncertainly, glancing between the two of them.

“I work in the office,” she corrects him, even though she’s explained this to him at least three times before. “I manage our division’s social media presence.”

“Aha! Facebooking for money. I hear you. Easy work if you can get it, right?”

Facebook, yeah. And she manages the Twitter feed and the Instagram and she’s the one who found a connection via Ruben’s colleague at the college to fix up all the code on the main website and make it sleek as fuck. She writes copy and answers the endless reader questions across all the platforms. She keeps up with all the stupid buzzwords and fads to maximize their visibility, she researches and reaches out to the charities they partner with, she seeks out independent artists to be spotlighted. She even gets the goddamn coffee because she’s the youngest in the office and the job automatically fell to her, and a million other small responsibilities. It’s not gonna win her a Pulitzer or change the world or anything, Vanessa knows _that,_ and it's not her dream job either, but she’s busy and she’s good at it and she works hard.

“Yeah, pretty much just Facebooking for money,” she says, heavy with sarcasm. Ruben hooks his foot around hers so their legs press together.

***

It’s pouring her second glass of wine and her dad saying “careful, taking after your mother there!”

Vanessa pointedly downs half the glass in one then says “Mom’s in treatment, actually. A month clean. She’s doing great.”

“If it sticks. Tenth time's the charm, maybe,” he says with a sardonic raised eyebrow. Which, yeah, Vanessa’s thought it herself, but like he has any _right_. Like he was there for any of it. Vanessa remembers being fifteen, with her mom crying over their unpaid bills by candlelight at the kitchen table while she pretended not to hear because she didn’t know how to comfort her. Her dad probably remembers the three vacations he took abroad that year.

Ruben takes her hand under the table, smoothing his thumb across her palm in firm reassuring strokes.

***

It’s the way her dad leans confidingly towards Ruben like Vanessa isn’t there and says “are you two going serious then? The last boy wouldn’t even move in with her, you know.”

“That was a mutual-“ Vanessa begins.

“But you seem like you’ve got good prospects and a good head on your shoulders -“

“I didn’t _want_ to move in with -“

“-so, you planning to take the next step with my Vanessa?” he asks, talking over her.

She makes a quiet frustrated sound. Something almost undetectable flickers across Ruben’s face.

“Vanessa likes having her own place,” he says, surprisingly sharp. “Seems like that’s her decision to make.”

“Oh, that’s what she _says_ ,” her dad chuckles. “You know women, though, they say one thing and what they really mean is -“

“Yeah, I do know women,” Ruben mutters in an unimpressed undertone. “Do _you_? It doesn’t sound like you’ve ever interacted with one for more than five minutes.”  
  
Vanessa snorts surprised laughter. Maybe she’s meant to intervene at this point but…well, Ruben with his hackles up is always her favorite show, and there’s something hilarious about him lecturing anyone on social interaction. She sips her wine.

“Excuse me?!”

“You heard,” says Ruben. 

Her dad looks outraged, turning to Vanessa and pointing accusingly at Ruben. Ugh. What a fucking _child_.

“Do you pick these men just to bother me? Is that what it is? The kid from the bodega might’ve been a deadbeat but at least he had some manners.”

Vanessa’s hand clenches way too tight around Ruben’s. His does the same. They both wince.

“Usnavi’s _not_ a deadbeat,” says Ruben. “He’s the hardest worker I know. Don’t talk about him like that.”

“He works in a _corner store_. And what’s it to you how I talk about my daughter’s ex?”

And you know what? _Fuck_ this. It’s fun to watch Ruben get mad at people Vanessa doesn’t like. It’s no fun to hear someone talk shit about either of her guys.

“I’m dating both of them, actually,” she says a little too loudly. Ruben shrinks at the attention as the people at the next few tables turn to stare at them. She pats his knee apologetically.

“…What?”

“I’m dating both of them, Dad. Ruben _and_ Usnavi. We’re all in a relationship, together. And it’s great, and they’re great, so how about step the hell off?”

Her dad blinks at her. “Please tell me this is a joke, Vanessa.”

Vanessa pulls out her phone and shows him her lockscreen wallpaper (a screenshot of a Snapchat she’d sent to Nina: Vanessa in sunglasses pulling a stupid mouth-open-tongue-out face while over her shoulder Ruben and Usnavi are in a world of their own, foreheads pressed together and tender, joyful looks on both their faces. Three heart emojis as the caption.) and shrugs like _there you have it._ He looks dumbstruck.

“So, but…two of them? And they’re… _together,_ too? Nessa, that’s not _right_ , you can’t -“

“I can, and I am.” She folds her arms. Obviously knowing she won’t back down, Dad turns to Ruben instead.

“And what is this for _you_? Some kind of midlife crisis -“

“He’s only like five years older than me, Dad!“

“- or trying to make it seem less gay, or what?”

“ _No,”_ Ruben snaps, this time not caring when people turn around at the sudden volume. “We’re with Vanessa because she’s _amazing,_ and the best woman I’ve ever met and- and she could have two _hundred_ guys love her as much as me and Usnavi do and it still wouldn’t be as much as she deserves!”

Fuck! Did he just- _fuck!_ She stares at Ruben, speechless.

“It’s not the kind of thing my girl should be -“

“She’s not _your_ girl,” Ruben says. “You don’t make her choices and you had nothing to do with how she grew up. That’s all Vanessa. We want her to be happy. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“Ruben,” she finally says, her heart hammering loud loud loud. “It’s okay. We’re leaving now.”

“Nessa, you know I’m just trying to do what’s best -“

“Dad,” she cuts him off. “I will give a shit about your opinions on my life when you’re in it for more than two days out the year, except actually I still won’t because your opinions suck. And if you can’t wrap your head around the fact that Usnavi and Ruben are both here to stay, don’t even bother with those two days. It really ain't no loss to me. Come on, Ruben."

“Okay,” Ruben says meekly, all his anger gone, and on automatic adds “thanks for dinner” to her dad. Vanessa rolls her eyes.

She manages to keep her chill as they leave and doesn’t trust herself to say much walking down the street, except that sets Ruben on edge and he keeps asking if she’s okay before devolving into nervous, poorly-punctuated rambling.

“-know I should’ve let you handle it but it’s just he kept talking over you and he made all those comments about you and your mom and Usnavi, and…he made us three sound so _wrong_ but I didn’t actually realize I was gonna yell at him till I was already doing it -“

It starts to sound like he’s going to stress himself into a genuine panic attack, so screw waiting til they get back to hers. Vanessa steers him down the next alleyway they come to, while his babbling falters off in confusion. Now he just looks scared, which she _really_ didn’t mean to happen.

Her intention is to lead with _don’t worry, I just didn’t want to talk about this in the middle of the street_ , but she can’t restrain herself any longer. “You love me?”

“…Huh?” he asks, blindsided.

“In there. You said, two hundred boys who love me as much as you and Usnavi do. Did you mean that?”

He looks at her for a long, long time, and his voice when he speaks is very deliberately measured. “Yes. I love you.”

“You yelled at him. For me.”

“Yes.”

“Because you love me.”

“Yes.”

Ruben grunts in surprise when she throws herself into a kiss so hard he hits the wall behind him, and Vanessa’s glad he’s usually okay for her to play a little rougher than Usnavi does so she doesn’t have to stop and apologize. It’s only sweet and grateful at first, trying to show all the things she doesn’t have the words to tell him, but then she kisses him and kisses him and suddenly they both turn desperate. Vanessa curls her tongue into his mouth and scrapes her nails down his sides: Ruben draws her in closer, hiking her skirt up so she can press herself right against the growing bulge in his pants, though she’s not quite at the right angle for it to be as satisfying as she wants.

He mouths at her neck and they’re riding into each other hard, almost like fucking if only their clothes weren’t so in the way. God, she could have him right here, unzip his pants and push her underwear to the side and just go at it almost-dressed and dirty in this alleyway. They’re not quite tipsy but they’ve both got just enough of a buzz from the wine that she seriously considers going for it. Except Ruben just told her he loves her, and now he’s muffling sounds in her shoulder and wearing too many clothes when what she wants is to see all of him, hear him fall apart under her attention.

“My place. _Now_ ,” she says, and Ruben nods eagerly. She straightens her skirt then takes his hand again and drags him out the alleyway, both of them running, which ain’t exactly playing it cool but who gives a shit about cool? Ruben _loves_ her.

***

It’s worth slowing down a moment once they’re in Vanessa’s room to appreciate Ruben naked and arranged artfully on her bed, biting his lip. His body shines golden with white-line intersections against the pale blue sheets.

“You’re such a pretty little thing, ain’t you?” Vanessa murmurs, enjoying the way it makes him shiver. “Do I need a heads up on anything before we start?”

“Only the usual stuff. Take whatever you want,” he says, as if that’s totally fine and not one of the hottest things she’s ever gonna hear.

It’s gonna be one of _those_ evenings. Vanessa likes being in charge. Ruben likes letting someone else take the lead. It works out well between them, though it’s a delicate line and still very, very new. Ruben adores being _told_ he’s good, but went ice white and scrambled for his sweater the one  time she asked if he was _going to be good,_ spent the rest of the night sat on the bathroom floor shaking and sick. She tries not to think too hard about that. There’s things he’s not ready to tell them yet. Straight-up demands and instructions are very risky ground, but he’s real into authoritative requests and suggestions. The pain thing is something they’re still figuring out.

Usnavi’s in between their extremes, can go from blinking up at them from on his knees to gripping Ruben’s hair with his fist and saying  _can you make yourself come for me, Ruben?_  on a dime depending on the mood, and she knows Ruben trusts him too (how could anyone not trust Usnavi?). But Usnavi's still a dude, and Ruben can't help it if sometimes his body interprets that as  _threat_. There’s still things Ruben only lets Vanessa do, and things that make Usnavi uncomfortable anyway so they save it for when he’s not around.

“You’ll tell me if you need to stop? Red or tap out, yeah?” She doesn’t need to check he remembers every time, probably, but its almost like a ritual, the question letting them shift gears from everyday Ruben and Vanessa to what they are here.

“I will, I trust you, green,” says Ruben, almost like a chant, same as he does every time. She kisses him deep, and then they're ready.

There’s things that are just for Ruben and Vanessa, like a hand resting lightly on Ruben’s throat: Usnavi’s hands are gentle and safe, but bigger and broader and even a fleeting touch right here from them makes Ruben flinch. Vanessa’s are small, delicate. She lets her fingers tighten just a tiny bit and she can feel his ragged breath vibrate. Holds, releases, does it again a little tighter this time. Ruben trembles underneath her. It’s not enough to hurt, or even to cut off his air. She knows that she could do it and he’d let her if she wanted: he knows she could do it and she’d stop if he tapped out. Just the suggestion and the knowing is enough. Hold. Release. Repeat. Listen to him breathe, look at his eyelashes flutter and the expressive tilt of his brows.

“I wanna fuck you some day, Ruben,” she says, letting him go for the last time and stroking the exposed line of his neck. “I know how loud you can get when Usnavi’s doing it to you. I wanna hear how you sound when it’s me. Bet we can find something fun to work with in that collection of yours.”

“…I didn’t know you knew about that,” he says hoarsely, looking only slightly embarrassed.

“Usnavi’s borrowed underwear off you before, we know what’s in that drawer. Or maybe we could buy something special for the occasion. I bet Usnavi would like to watch that. We could take it in turns with you, make it a competition. Who can make you shout their name the loudest?”

“Vanessa,” he groans.

“Not yet,” she says. “There’s better things you could be doing with that mouth for now.” And she moves to straddle over Ruben’s face while he gazes up at her in wonder.

He’s not as strung high with nerves any more as he was the first few times, but he never stopped getting that _look_ : round-eyed amazement, pink dusted across his cheeks. It’s almost too innocent except for the newfound certainty of his fingers as he circles one around her clit, before she tugs it away and lowers herself onto his mouth.

Vanessa’s had some boys with more technically skillful hands but never met anyone who puts so much into someone else’s pleasure as either Ruben or Usnavi. How lucky did she get? Nothing else compares: they both have an enthusiasm that’s somewhere close to worship. Ruben teases gasps out of her, kissing and sucking while he pumps two fingers slightly clumsily in and out, even presses his nose against her and she can feel his breath coming stuttered and hot and heavy. She’s overwhelmed by just how much he enjoys this: his feet are scrabbling at the bed, trying to get enough purchase to cant himself upward into a relief he’s not going to find yet.

When she backs off a little to make sure he can catch his breath there’s wetness all across his face, smeared across his lips and even droplets on his long eyelashes. He makes a sound of disappointment and pulls her back down to him, opening his mouth hungrily.

God, _fuck_. Vanessa’s supposed to be the one in charge but it’s so hard to keep the act in place when he's doing that, when she feels like this. It’s almost too much to bear, but she grips the headboard tight and rolls her hips, lets the pleasure rise in outward rippling waves closer and closer and when she comes in a flood Ruben pushes his tongue up inside her to catch it, hands stroking softly down her thighs. He's unbelievable sometimes.

She’s unsteady when she rises off him and moves back down his body, and Ruben’s eyes are so dark and needy it’s hard to look right at him. There's precome beading on his dick: Vanessa trails her finger then paints it in a vertical line down the center of Ruben’s already shining lips. He darts his tongue out to taste himself. She drags the end of a fingernail just this side of too hard down his length. It pulses under her touch and Ruben twitches as he lets out a juddering breath, tears spilling down his cheeks.

Usnavi’s too soft for this, he really doesn’t like it when Ruben cries. Vanessa knows that sometimes he needs to. “Color?” she asks, just to be sure.

“ _Green_ ,” he says, emphatic, and that’s all. He never really begs for it during these sessions, though she knows he can real nicely. Vanessa’s got the wheel here, he doesn’t try and drive from the backseat. If she chose to leave him sat like this he wouldn’t say a word. If she left the room completely and came back an hour later, she knows he wouldn’t even have touched himself. They haven’t tried that. She doesn’t like to deny him too much, despite her position. He already knows what it's like to want without reward, Vanessa doesn't need to be another person to teach him that lesson.

They function in a paradox: he'd let her take everything from him, he’d let her do anything at all, but he only allows it because he knows she never _would_ take everything, never do anything that would hurt him for real, only wants what’s best for him.

“You’ve done so well,” she says. Ruben sobs, nodding gratefully. “I’m gonna let you come.”

“Thankyou,” he manages to gasp. “Love you.”

Oh, it almost hurts to hear it. She breathes through the emotion. Takes a condom from the drawer and rolls it on before settling herself onto him, surrounding him, hands on his shoulders to help keep her balance. Ruben makes a feral sound, raspy and low. Can’t seem to stop doing it once he starts, getting louder and louder as she rides him with her hands in his hair and her lips on his jaw.

“Vanessa, Vanessa, am I allowed-” he pants through his tears.

“It’s okay, babe,” she soothes, smoothing his sweaty hair back off his face. “You can let go.”

The end of her sentence is lost under the sound when he moans so forceful it’s nearly a scream. She lets him twist and shatter underneath her, watching the way his eyebrows draw together almost like pain. His whole body goes limp with relief when he’s done.

“Good boy,” she says as he pulls out of her, softening. “You did so good. _You’re_ so good, Ruben.”

Ruben cries hard for another minute or so, face hidden in his hands, and Vanessa keeps up a string of quiet comfort and affirmation while he does. When he starts to calm down she passes him his t-shirt and boxers. He dresses shakily then wraps them both in the sheet, even though its still barely evening and they’re not sleepy. There’s a catharsis about this that’s like standing under a fall of ice water, cleansing and refreshing but always leaves them both raw. Ruben needs a safe shell to retreat to while he heals himself back over. Vanessa's not unaware of what it means that he lets her in there with him, cocooned in his arms so that she can be safe too.

“Okay?” she asks, and feels him nod.

“Yeah. You?”

“Mmhm." Her body is ringing with the aftershocks of the evening.

Back when she was single, Vanessa learnt to be a shapeshifter: towering tall when she wanted to walk the streets unbothered, but if you wanna take a guy to bed most of them prefer it coy, the hair twisted round one finger and the shy look-down-glance-up thing. Pretend like you’re a tiny lovely creature in a cage, and that it’s only their attention can help you grow big enough to shatter thebars, pretend it’s them and them alone who helped you run pace and growl like a wild and untamed wolf, when really she was the one hunting them all along. 

This is what Vanessa likes best about her boys. She never has to pretend anything at all. She can be however big she wants to be and they adapt to what she needs: Ruben small and submissive beneath her, or wrapped all around her like a second, shielding skin; Usnavi pinned by his wrists and pleading, or lifting her off the ground completely with strong arms supporting her whole weight.

She was in charge earlier but now Ruben is the one surrounding her and she doesn’t have to be the wolf, she can be the girl in the forest with her soft heart unprotected from predators. She could offer everything to him, he wouldn’t take it all from her. Every time he breaks her heart - so many times, never his fault - he builds it all back up again with his soft smile and sly sarcasm and the eager, elated look he gets every time he sees them both.

“Hey,” she says, roughly. “I love you too, you know that, right? So fucking much.”

“You’re gonna make me cry again,” Ruben warns in a wobbly voice, kissing her shoulder. 

“I need you to know,” she insists. 

“I do know,” he says. “It’s ridiculous, really.”

Vanessa can’t disagree with that, but that doesn’t make it any less amazing.


	9. contemplar las carreteras

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: you didn't think i'd just skip over this one, did you?]

It was pretty easy with Vanessa to tell her that he loved her, primarily because it happened entirely by accident and the only thing he had to do consciously was clarify. And now he’s got a problem, because Ruben has said it to Vanessa, and Vanessa has said it to Ruben, and _Usnavi_ has said it to Ruben, and obviously Usnavi and Vanessa have loved each other for years, and now there’s one link missing that needs dealt with and Ruben doesn’t know what to do.  
  
Not that the problem is Usnavi, nor Ruben’s feelings for him. God, of course not. The only reason he didn’t tell him out loud straight away is because Ruben didn’t want his first time saying it to either of them to just be a bounced-back _I love you too_. He wanted it to stand on its own, so that they knew for real he meant it and wasn’t just saying it as The Socially Acceptable Response.

Except now he’s had too much time to think about it, which is never a good sign. He wants it to be perfect. It was perfect with Vanessa without meaning to be, somehow, unintentionally dropped in the middle of calling out her jerk of a dad, though it’d be hard to explain why that works to anyone who doesn’t get Vanessa. But he doesn’t know how to tell Usnavi. There’s too many places it could happen: the bodega where their whole thing got started, Usnavi’s living room where they first kissed for real, his bedroom. They’ve left a trail of sentimental little moments all around the Heights. He doesn’t know which is the best point to make a call back to.

And the thing is too that Ruben isn’t smooth, or charming. He doesn’t sweep people off their feet. The second he goes to say it one place he gives himself just a second too long, so he can feel the words congeal to something stilted and awkward before they have a chance to come out. It’d end up that tone that sounds like he's insincere when really it’s just he’s got too _many_ feelings to know which one to plug his voice into.

Vanessa keeps suggesting things like skywriting or tattooing it on his knuckles or tagging it on the bodega wall, because she’s a pain in the ass and no help whatsoever.  Ruben’s made her swear not to mention that they’ve said it to each other yet: he doesn’t want Usnavi to think that he matters less than Vanessa, when it’s only taking Ruben so long because he’s paralysed by indecision.

He’s pondering hard on it wandering down the street and his head sort of hurts from thinking in circles, so it’s nice to bump into Benny for a break from his own thinking. “Hi, Benny.”  
  
“Ruben!Aite, man, how’s it going?” Benny holds up a fist and beams with delight like always when Ruben awkwardly bumps his own against it. It’s about the upper limit of how comfortable he is with touching people who aren’t Usnavi or Vanessa, but it makes him feel good to know that even this is something that was unthinkable to him once. Look at all the things that catch him by surprise daily.

They’re only talking for half a minute when here’s something familiar: Usnavi, almost flying completely past them in a hurry before he catches sight and doubles back, face illuminated by affection.

“Guys!” he half-shouts, far more overjoyed than necessary considering he saw them both that morning. He nods his head at Benny and then settles his gaze on Ruben.

“Hey there,” he says.

“Hey,” says Ruben, and feels his cheeks heating up for no reason. That’s so stupid. It’s been _months_ since they started seeing each other.

“Hey,” says Usnavi, for a second time. His eyes are all happy at the edges, it does weird things to Ruben in a part of him that exists somewhere far deeper than his body.

“I remember when I used to be your favorite,” says Benny, thankfully before Ruben does something like say _hey_ again and Usnavi startles with a laugh.

“Fuck, sorry, man, you know how it is. And I can’t actually hang around, I’ll see you both later, maybe?” He half-hugs Benny, he kisses Ruben on the cheek before turning to leave, and it’s a de ja vu that sets off a chain reaction. Ruben’s body floods with the memory of every tiny forward movement that took him towards loving them with all his broken, healing heart, and how Usnavi with no patience who can never sit still has stopped to wait for him to be ready at every single step.

It bursts out of Ruben’s mouth completely by accident, pretty much yelling it as Usnavi heads off down the street again. “Hey, I love you!”

Usnavi stops and turns around. “Who, me?”

“No, I was talking to Benny,” says Ruben. “We’ve been dating for weeks, I’m sorry you had to find out this way. _Yes_ , you.”

“I have a sudden need to go be literally anywhere else right now,” says Benny, and he does exactly that.

Ruben distantly makes a mental note to feel bad about neither of them saying goodbye to him later, but right now he’s distracted. Usnavi’s come up close, stands just looking at him with a dumbstruck happy look for so long that Ruben feels himself actually _giggle. Jesus Christ, Marcado, get a grip_. He hides behind one hand. “Stop staring at me!”

“No,” says Usnavi, catching and suppressing a smile before it has chance to break out proper. As promised, he does not stop staring. Ruben pushes him lightly in the chest; Usnavi grabs both his wrists and holds onto them.

“Don’t you have a bodega to get back to?” Ruben grumbles.

“Fuck the bodega, you love me!”  exclaims Usnavi. The threatened grin finally takes over: god, he’s too, too beautiful, and then he starts laughing which only makes it worse. “Holy shit! You _love_ me.”

This seems almost familiar, too.

“Yes,” says Ruben, full of light. “I really do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: some callbacks here to chapter 2 of your body is a triangle and i'm full of LOOK AT WHERE WE ARE, LOOK AT WHERE WE STARTED]


	10. el cable(ado)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: two chapters in a day? you lucky ducklings. AND WHERE DO ALL THESE USNAVI FEELINGS KEEP COMING FROM I'M FUCKING INUNDATED
> 
> this chapter is for [curiouswildflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouswildflower/pseuds/curiouswildflower), who basically gets a dual writing credit here - i did all the prose, but a lot of the ideas came out of an Incredibly Enthusiastic discussion we had about our neurodivergent boys the other day. go read everything they've written, their ruben is so perfect i don't even have words for him.
> 
> also if you wanna see the ot3's handwriting and missed it on my tumblr, [here you go!](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/post/161294394826/you-cant-just-say-that-and-then-not-tell-us-what/). that's usnavi's very best attempt. i think it suits him, though.]

Sometimes the letters come out backwards. Or they go in backwards, he’s never quite been sure, it’s pretty much always a 50-50 as to which way round the R is even supposed to go but it’s not like it _matters_ , not the way that people matter or talking matters or living matters. It’s just lines on a page and Usnavi’s always lived out loud.

Except that sometimes, unavoidably, it does matter. Like when he’s got to fill out a billion and one forms just to put his store up for sale, like this wasn’t hard enough already.

He moves his fingers carefully to where he was always taught they were meant to go, a steady little set of points positioned around the pen, and he gets as far as “U-S-N-A-” then his hand cramps up and the pen wobbles and the “V” falls out of the little box its supposed to be sat in.  
  
“Goddammit,” he mutters, but it’s okay, he doesn’t mind too much, it’s just a little messy.

He grits his teeth and grips the pen harder and ignores the cramp. It wouldn’t win any calligraphy prizes but there, in uneven black block capitals along the line at the top, USNAVI DE LA VEGA.  
  
That’s the easy part.

It shouldn’t be difficult at all, is the thing. It’s a bunch of lines and boxes and he knows he knows the information. Like, come on, one of them is just asking for the address of the business, which he definitely damn well knows, he just can't remember right now which number is his apartment and which is for the bodega. But the sheet in front of him is all lines and boxes and he’s trying to concentrate on just one at a time while the rest of them keep creeping into his vision and all his trying-to-be-neat letters keep creeping out of where they’re supposed to go and in all the mess he can’t seem to get to the bit of his brain where he keeps the address of the business he has lived and worked at for twenty-five fucking years.

It’s _fine_. It’s okay. This happens with new stuff like this. He had to figure out a bunch of it after his parents died, which was just a fucking trip because exactly what he needed then was to sit down with the only bit of the store he didn’t have the slightest clue how to run. Whenever he’d tried before his eyes and the paper wandered about so much that it just gave him a headache, and his mamá said _don’t look so sad, Usnavi, there’s plenty of time to learn._

There wasn’t time for them to teach him it, though. It’s not like he can’t read or write. It’s more like sometimes he forgets how to, or like he sometimes loses progress and turns back into how he did it when he was seven or twelve or eighteen. He’s never got good handwriting but he can scribble notes to himself at normal-person-pace and he can read certain things fast even when there’s more words. He managed in school and he managed when his parents left him with this place and even though this is last thing he needs right now, he’ll manage it again. It’s just when it’s work like this he falls completely to pieces.

If only Nina were in town, if only Abuela were here. They were good at making these things make sense: Usnavi’s good at making coffee and making loud noises and making people smile, but he can only try his barely-even-mediocre best with this.

He’s got two copies of all the forms so he can make all the mistakes on one and copy the right stuff over on the second, but he’s struggling with the first attempt already. It’s not just the words are shifting but the sentences themselves are weird, phrased all ambiguous and Usnavi’s got a crazy-good vocabulary but he can never interpret this shit. It makes him nervous, because it's always for something _important_ , and that makes even the bits that he’d be able to do no problem in any other context seem impossible.

_If you don’t know the answer to something,_ he can hear Nina’s patient voice saying, then _sometimes it’s easier to just make a note of it, skip it and then go back later, instead of getting worked up right at the start._ So he writes a careful wobbly question mark next to his address, trying not to feel like an idiot for it. It’s in his head somewhere, he just can’t find it right now.  
  
He puts a question mark and then another question mark and there’s strings of numbers half-filled out, semi-remembered details about taxes and building inspections and all of this information is sat in all the files and folders and forms piled on the table in front of him. He could just look it up. When he tries to tell himself to just open any one folder to get what he needs he can’t, there’s too many and he can’t decide which one to look at first so he doesn’t look at any at all. There’s so much of it and he doesn’t know where to start.

He’s still only on the first side of this three-page document. It’s almost entirely a bunch of increasingly agitated question marks. Might as well have not started at all - no, it’s okay, he’s _not_ gonna get upset. He can do this. Address. He’s got it saved somewhere in his phone, just deal with that for now and the rest later.

There it is, but when he goes back up to the top of the page to fill it in next to his name, he notices than in the capital N in USNAVI he’s put the slanting line the wrong way. He’s not made that mistake in _years_ , but there it is right now.  
  
Twenty-five years old and it’s still a coin toss about whether he can even write his own name properly.

“Goddammit,” he says again, and his voice cracks this time. He crosses his name out savagely, pressing so hard with the pen it probably leaves a mark in the cheap wood of the table underneath. “Fuck, shit, _goddammit_.”

There’s a horrible pressure behind his eyes and in his throat and he feels stupid, stupid, fucking _stupid_ even though he knows he isn’t, he knows he’s just not good at this specific thing and gets worse at it when he’s stressed. Most of the time that explanation is enough that he doesn’t get down about it. Right now, it’s not helping at all.

The front door to his apartment bangs open then shut. Right. He invited Ruben over. Supposedly to do something fun, or preferably something _Fun_ , but probably what’s going to happen now is Ruben’s going to sit at Usnavi’s kitchen table watching him cry all over paperwork, which even someone who parties so hard at the intersection of Nerdy and Kinky as Ruben does probably wouldn’t get off on. Maybe if Usnavi were crying over mathematical formulas or chemistry, but Usnavi mostly only needs math for the store and let’s not go bringing potentially hazardous substances into the sexual equation.

**_Pay attention_** _, Usnavi._

“Hey- oh, _Usnavi_ , what’s wrong?” As soon as he sees Usnavi’s face, Ruben comes immediately to his side and tangles a concerned hand through his hair. “What happened?”  
  
“It’s no big deal, it’s just all this stuff I gotta sort out for selling the store,” Usnavi explains, trying not to think too hard about Ruben with his PhD at twenty-two and Usnavi here getting teary over the basic alphabet. “I’m no good at this shit. And there’s so _much_ of it.”  
  
He glares at the paper. Ruben sits next to him and slides it over so he can read it. “Ah, okay. Well, let’s break down the problem. Which bit are you having trouble with?”

“ _All_ of it,” Usnavi says, despairingly. “It’s just- it’s hard to see past the way it’s laid out, and the stupid way they word everything messes with my head which messes with my writing and I forget all the shit I know because there’s too much noise, and it all gets mixed up and then it makes my hand hurt.”

“Usnavi,” says Ruben slowly, tracing the dipping uneven lines of his letters on the sheet in front of him with a fingertip, wearing that same sudden-realisation expression that his teachers and his parents and Nina have all worn before. “I don’t know if…have you heard of a condition -“  


“ _Yes_ , Ruben,” he says, impatiently, because he knows what’s coming. He doesn’t want the gentle questions or the explanations or the analysis. “Yes, I’ve heard of dysgraphia and I’ve heard of ADHD and I’ve heard of all the million other fucking conditions it might be too. And thanks for the concern, but _no_ , I don’t wanna sit here and have you pick out a label and tell me all about what it _means_ and that there are doctors out there that I can’t afford to see and all the scientific little whatevers that explain it because none of that is gonna help me fill out this one specific piece of shit simple piece of _paper_ , which is really all I wanna do right now.”

“Okay,” says Ruben quietly, a flash of hurt quickly suppressed across his face, and Usnavi feels like there’s a black hole in his lungs. “Well, I can help with _that_ a lot more than the other stuff anyway, if you still want me to?”

“Oh. Oh my fucking God, I’m sorry,” Usnavi says, which isn’t good enough at all. His eyes are starting to burn so hard he can’t see through the blur. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to- _Jesus_ , i’m not gonna yell at you then make you help me, I’m not - I _won’t_ do that to you, let’s just leave it, let’s forget about it and I’ll deal with it myself tomorrow-“

“Hey, hey, come on,” says Ruben, because Usnavi’s got himself stuck in one of those endless strangling sentences that he sometimes forgets to breathe through. “Relax. It’s fine. I get it, I promise you I _get_ it. And you’re not making me help you, I offered.”

Usnavi just shakes his head hard, not trusting himself to say anything.  


“You’re allowed to get upset,” Ruben says gently. “Vanessa’s allowed to yell at things and I’m allowed to get bitter about stuff and you’re allowed to like, once in a blue freakin’ moon express a negative emotion without punching yourself in the face about it afterwards.”  
  
“I know. But not at _you._ Not ever at you, Ruben, I don’t want to be like-“  
  
“Usnavi,” Ruben grabs his shoulders and rests their foreheads together, eyes big and open and honest right up close to him. “You’re _nothing_ like Jason. Not even a little bit. You have to trust me to decide my own limits, okay? And you can decide yours. If you don’t want me to help that’s fine, but I’m saying that I _want_ to.”

“Okay,” says Usnavi in a small unsteady voice. “Okay. I’d like it if you helped. Thank you.”

Ruben kisses him hard on the mouth and then pulls his chair in a little closer. “Cool. Alright, so if it’s all a big mess then first we gotta break it down into smaller messes. Is this your practice one? Let’s go through the questions and see if we can rewrite them together. Then we can figure out where you keep all the information for it.”

That’s what they do: Ruben takes apart the questions word by word out loud with Usnavi til it makes sense, and in his tiny neat handwriting on a new sheet of paper writes them out clearly labelled, clearly spaced apart. He writes a list of what information Usnavi needs and where that can be found because it’s easier for Usnavi to remember it one question at a time instead of trying to fit the whole thing in his head at once. 

He never once tries to take Usnavi’s pen and actually write the answers for him, or say _it’ll be quicker if I just do it for you_. He just decodes and explains. Usnavi slowly, carefully fills out the new form and the page stays mostly still and his eyes mostly don’t try and wander off to find something else to look at. His letters aren’t neat and never will be but at least they’re all the right way round this time.

Ruben is scribbling away beside him as he finishes- how does he make it so readable when he writes so fast? Usnavi watches him work.  
  
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, curiously.  
  
“Oh. Uh, I noticed while we were going through that a lot of the phrases you had trouble with were things that come up a lot in similar paperwork? So I thought I’d write like, a glossary, sort of, so you’ve got something to refer to for if it starts to mix you up next time. I mean, it’s not guaranteed to mean the same thing, it’s probably not even that helpful, I just thought that -“  
  
“Ruben,” Usnavi says. “You’re something else, you know that? Your students must fucking love you.”  
  
Ruben tries to look modest but then he grins. “They do,” he confesses. “And I’ve counted at least three who definitely have a crush on me. _Not_ that I’m into that dynamic, but it’s pretty flattering.”

“I’m still sorry I got mad at you,” Usnavi tells him.

“That barely even counts as getting mad. But I didn’t realise it was a sore point. I wasn't trying to pressure you, i just wanted to know you’d thought about it. Sometimes a label can help. But only for some people, so it’s okay if you don’t want that.”

Usnavi feels quiet, right down to his bones in a way he isn’t usually quiet. “Does it help for you?” he asks.

He doesn’t mean the PTSD. This, a thing Ruben only ever called by name once, so Usnavi doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say it either. It’s not a secret in the way that Ian is a secret, painful and still filled with too much misdirected shame. It’s not a secret the way that all the things Ruben hates about himself are secrets, hidden like rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, jagged edges that they’re slowly eroding, because Ruben doesn’t seem to hate this. It’s just a thing that Ruben likes to hold quiet and careful for himself, with a strange tenderness like cupping a butterfly in your hands. It’s just that Ruben doesn’t have a lot of himself that life hasn’t forced him to display unwillingly, and this is something all for him.  
  
And for Usnavi, and for Vanessa, but only once and only very quietly, so that’s why Usnavi doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say it, or if its only a label for Ruben’s hand to write.

“It doesn’t _change_ a lot of things,” he says, “My brain still works the same no matter what you call it. But yeah, it really helps. I like things to make sense and I like to know the shape of things and it makes that easier.Which means I have more space to deal with all the other stuff too.”

“I’m happy it works for you,” Usnavi says. “But. I already did all the special ed classes and all that shit in school. It’s not gonna make a difference, and I can’t really afford it anyway, and if I can’t do anything about it then I don’t see the point of any of the other names for any of it. I’m just me.”

“That’s fine,” says Ruben. “For me it’s...these are different subcategories of Ruben. I like knowing what to call all of them, that’s my system, that works for me. But if you think it won’t work for you then you can be just Usnavi, and we’ll figure the rest of it out ourselves.”

“Okay,” he says, relieved. “That’s good. I mean, being Usnavi is about the only thing I’m good at, I kinda want to stick with it.”

“You’re the _best_ at being Usnavi,” says Ruben. “It’s the only thing I ever want you to be.”


	11. fronteras de tu cuerpo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: usnavi's been having a bit of a rough time of it in the ninety verse. i'm giving him a break. this came out of a convo with (i think) maeflowerpetunia, as so many things seem to these days, though it might've been one of the other people i've spent six hours at a time talking headcanons with at 4am on tumblr. y'all are enthusiastic, i love it. ITS NOT SAFE FOR WORK]

It’s not like Usnavi doesn’t know what they do when he’s not there. They’ve got their separate configurations but at the heart of it they always converge into a three so there’s things that bleed over. Things like the red-yellow-green that’s useful even outside of one of Vanessa and Ruben’s scenes, which Usnavi and Vanessa never needed for the two of them but Ruben’s got a lot of hidden tripwires so it works out well for that. And Usnavi likes hearing about what they do. He likes when Vanessa tells him in a smug voice about how she made Ruben scream, he likes the way Ruben whispers behind his hand like he’s sharing a secret when he tells Usnavi how unbelievable it was. 

It’s just that Usnavi’s never gonna be okay with seeing Ruben cry, and that’s kind of part of that specific thing. Usnavi likes to keep things simple: sex should feel good, sex is about love, sex is about making everyone happy and making everyone laugh and making everyone come.He knows that it’s unfair to what they do to imagine it something negative. It’s what Ruben wants, and it’s not like Vanessa’s just getting off making him feel shitty. Catharsis, right? It bleeds off the bad energy that pools inside Ruben’s brain, and Vanessa likes that this is something she knows how to help with in a way Usnavi can’t, the way he knows how to draw laughter out of Ruben when it feels impossible. Doesn’t change the twist of unbearable sadness in Usnavi’s stomach when he sees it, the knowledge that Ruben really doesn’t have _any_ corner of his life that he doesn’t have to at least partially direct towards healing himself.

He knows, too, that for some of those tripwires Vanessa moves too light and small to set off but Usnavi doesn’t have the delicacy, is built too similar to past threats to pass through as easily. Usnavi treads as careful as he can, but some things in his hands are ingrained in Ruben’s instincts no matter how sweet Usnavi makes his touches and some things aren’t worth the risk. Him and Vanessa have both hit buttons wrong with Ruben before, and it’s probably one of the worst things Usnavi has ever seen.

But that’s what makes it so _weird_ to him, that Ruben just lets go and lets Vanessa run the show. This is Ruben who won’t even go to a restaurant unless he knows beforehand all the details of the journey and the location and how to escape and get back home if he needs to. This is Ruben who Usnavi’s had to listen to screaming at him through the locked bathroom door that he **_won’t_** _, you can’t make me do anything, Ian, I don’t have to do what you tell me any more!_ until his voice gave out. It’s hard to reconcile all the different sides of Ruben, sometimes. 

So Usnavi doesn’t get why Ruben likes it, but that doesn’t mean he’s not curious. He says as much, a night where it’s the two of them sat cross-legged facing one another one the sofa with a bowl of popcorn between them, just talking.

“I mean, we’ve done some stuff in that kinda area, we did all the getting tied up and stuff, but it’s the…formality, maybe? Like, outright committing to that _attitude_ makes it seems kind of intimidating, I guess. And considering your everything…?”

“I get what you’re saying. Honestly, though, it’s not intimidating if you know you’re safe. It’s just…like taking a break from thinking,” Ruben says. “Giving up control. Not having to make any decisions. But still being in control of _that,_ because it’s only pretend, so you can make it stop if you want to. Best of both worlds. Does that make sense?”  


When he puts it like that, it kinda does. Usnavi’s been independent for years and like hell does he need anyone else to run his life for him, but there’s some days when he has so many things to do that he doesn’t know how to do any of them till someone points him in a direction and says _start here, Usnavi._ Decisions are difficult, sometimes, even the easy ones. A break sounds nice.

“Sort of, yeah.” He attempts to throw a piece of popcorn into the air and catch it in his mouth. It bounces off his nose and disappears somewhere on the floor. “Damn. So does it really feel that good?”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” says Ruben emphatically. He eats popcorn so weirdly, takes a whole handful and then sort of shoves his tongue out into it and eats the bits that stick like he’s lapping it up piece by piece. It makes Usnavi want to grab him by the shoulders and yell _I love you so fucking much_ right into his face, which doesn’t actually make much sense as a response to this but which is undeniably true.

Usnavi leans in, even though nobody's here to overhear them. Being in a threeway is kind of like always having something to gossip about at a sleepover. _You have a crush! Tell me about them!_ He gets the sudden urge to offer to paint Ruben’s nails or something. “Have you ever thought about. Y’know. Switching it up?”  


“With _Vanessa_? Ha, no. She’s not always like, _super_ -dominating but she’s definitely not into being that far on the other side of the equation like I am. We’ve talked about it before. But, yeah, sometimes I am kinda curious what it’s like from her side.” Ruben wipes his popcorn-salt fingers on his pants. “Have you really never thought about trying it? The sub thing? I’m surprised it hasn’t come up before.”

A sudden tension thrills through the air. “…I don’t know. I’m not _against_ it. I just don’t fully get it, I guess.”  
  
He and Ruben meet eyes, and _speaking_ of feeling like a teenager with a crush: here’s that suspended moment of inevitability like knowing you’re sat with someone you’re about to kiss, that excitement of hearing _so I’m at home alone this weekend_ from someone you’ve been dating.

Usnavi’s heart is racing.   


***

Usnavi’s thoughts tend to roll around like a bag of dropped marbles most of the time, but once his mind does stick on something, it’s hard to get it out, and his mind is very much stuck right now. Still not sure whether he’d be into it but like Ruben said, it’s not so intimidating if you know you can make it stop, and he sort of just wants to _know_.

There’s not really many ways to casually bring it up, though, and Ruben doesn’t say anything, so he starts to think maybe it just won’t happen, except a few days later they’re making out all three of them lying on Ruben’s bed and Vanessa says “been hearing some interesting stuff about _you_ lately, De la Vega” to him, pressing her thumb to his kiss-bitten bottom lip and smirking.

“Have you?” he says, voice breaking high-pitched on the first word. Goddammit. One day, he’ll learn to have some chill, maybe. Ruben kisses the soft point just under his ear, near his jaw.

“Told her you were asking about all the fun we have,” he says. “Still curious?”  
  
Usnavi can only manage to nod, breathless with anticipation. They’ve been talking about him. He wonders what they’re gonna do to him.

“And I hear Ruben’s been thinking about changing things up, which, I just gotta see how _that_ plays out. So. You gonna do what Ruben tells you to, Usnavi?”

He swallows hard. “Yes.”

Ruben settles himself straddled across Usnavi’s lap, legs almost-crossed behind Usnavi’s back. Their faces are so close, cheeks nearly brushing, Ruben’s breath warm by Usnavi’s ear.

“You’ve been working too hard,” says Ruben, in a low voice. “We worry about you. You work so hard all the time.”

“And you take care of everyone else so well,” adds Vanessa, right up by his side. “Your turn, now.”

Is this the reward for his constant, wearying efforts, the two most beautiful people in the whole entire world telling him they’re gonna look after him? He feels like he hasn’t earned it. He could work twelve hour shifts every day for six lifetimes and not have earned _this_ , but he’s sure as shit not gonna kick up a fuss that it’s happening.

“You know, when Vanessa does this, I think she tries to see how loud she can make me be,” Ruben tells him.

“I do,” she confirms. “I’m very good at it.”

“Damn _right_ you are,” says Ruben, enthusiasm overriding the tone he’s trying to set for a second before he remembers himself. “But. Loud doesn’t seem like much of a challenge for _you_.”

Vanessa suddenly drags her nails down Usnavi’s chest and he arches upwards. “Fuck!”

“See?” she says.

“Did you guys _choreograph_ this?” Usnavi asks. They ignore him.

“So. We’ll take care of everything. I’m only gonna ask one thing from you,” says Ruben. “Can you keep quiet, Usnavi?”

Oh, shit.

“All evidence points to no,” he answers, but then shrinks under the double stare they pin him with. “I mean…yeah, I can be quiet. What happens if I don’t?”

“Wait and see,” says Vanessa.

“You can still say the colors, or tell us to stop,” Ruben reassures him. “You can tell us any time you don’t like something. But anything else, no.”

“Keep it secret, keep it safe, I gotcha,” Usnavi says, then “ow” because Vanessa flicks him in the arm with an exasperated sigh.

“Shoulda known it’d be a mission to get you to be serious,” she says. “You leave Gandalf out of this.”

Usnavi grins unapologetically. “Fine. I’ll play along. Do your worst.”

“You’re not talking any more, now,” says Ruben, firmly. His eyes are gleaming, and not in their usual cartoon-cute way, too narrow, too focused, too intense for that. Usnavi wonders if he’s gonna regret the _do your worst_ comment.

***

Mostly it seems kinda normal at first, albeit with more focus solely on Usnavi than the usual three-person give-and-take, not that he minds. They kiss him over and over and strip him down and run hands all over body like they’re checking he’s got all his pieces. He lies there feeling incandescent under their attention. But Usnavi’s never been much for patience and he really wants to know what their game plan is, so when Vanessa pauses with her hand on his chest to pinch one nipple hard between her finger and thumb he doesn’t bother to suppress the hissed _fuck_ it elicits, just to see what the reaction is.

They pull back, stop touching him completely, not just hands but with their whole bodies. That’s not what he was expecting.

“Wait, what?” he demands. “I thought you said you were takin’ care of me!”

“I thought _you_ said you could be quiet,” Ruben returns. “Can you?”

“Yes!” Usnavi says defensively. Ruben raises an eyebrow. Usnavi shuts his mouth and nods.

“That’s better,” says Ruben. “But I’ll be nice, we’ll call that one a practice run.”

Usnavi’s brain immediately pings a series of notifications, at least six different ways he could extend that into a bit and run with it. This is harder than he thought. He hadn’t taken into account the fact that pretty much for him and Ruben, _foreplay_ means _trying to see who wins in a verbal duel_ , drawing out innuendo and metaphor and one-liners to ridiculous lengths like improv, or like a sexy version of a rap battle.

Well. If he can’t talk, he wants to taste. Something to keep his restless mouth occupied. He tries to lean in towards them to steal a kiss, and Vanessa unceremoniously pushes him hard so he falls back lying against the pillows.

“Stay,” she instructs him, mockingly.

Usnavi can’t stop words from happening. “Is this how you are with him, when you two do your thing?” he asks. Vanessa laughs dark-chocolate richness.

“No, honey, I don’t need to tell him what to do like this. Ruben’s always good.”

Ruben looks smug.

“And I’m not?” Usnavi asks, with a strangely genuine disappointment even though he knows it’s just the game.

“Not yet,” she says. “Didn’t he tell you not to talk?”

“It’s _difficult_ ,” he sighs.

“We could always gag you,” she suggests, and hey, Usnavi’s dick is super into that. 

Ruben, not so much. “I don’t wanna do that to him.”

“I ain’t against it,” Usnavi says. Ruben shakes his head.

“Well, I _am_ ,” he says, a hard edge of tension creeping in. “I _don’t_ want to gag you.”

Ah. So it’s one of _those_ things. No, don’t dwell on it, don’t think too hard about it, they’re having fun right now.

“Hey, that’s fine,” says Vanessa. “It’s your show, Ruben.”

“Yep,” agrees Usnavi. “You can just do whatever the hell you want with me, really.”

“Jesus,” says Ruben. “Well. What I want is for you to stop talking, and frankly you’re really bad at it so far.”

Usnavi mimes zipping his mouth closed. He can do better.

“ _Good_ boy,” Ruben says, in a voice that’s not quite his, and there’s a strange, rollercoaster-swoop sensation like the bottom has dropped out of Usnavi’s stomach and his heart’s fallen into the gap left behind. Oh. 

Maybe he does get it, just a little bit.

***

With Usnavi at the centre of attention they play rougher, not the same reverence Usnavi and Ruben lavish on Vanessa or the caressing hint of caution that Ruben usually receives. They manhandle him around, positioning him where they want him and grabbing his hands to stop him touching and pulling his hair so he exposes his neck for them to bite at like he’s dating a couple of vampires. They’re still half-dressed, in t-shirts and underwear, while Usnavi is fully naked underneath them. It’s almost humiliating to be so at their mercy, but the affection that bleeds from their hands into his body just makes it blissful. Somehow, he stays silent.

He lets Vanessa pull his legs as far apart as they’ll go and Ruben presses the pad of one finger just barely into him. “Color?” he asks.

“Green.” 

They don’t so often do this. Ruben can’t get enough of it for himself, their fingers or Usnavi’s dick or, though they’ve not had the chance to witness it in action yet, apparently one of a _truly_ mindblowing array of interesting toys he keeps in his underwear drawer which Usnavi is both fascinated and intimidated by. The whole thing is much newer for Usnavi, took a few months for him to actually decide he was okay with the idea of having anything inside him. Ruben hasn’t fucked him yet: even just his hands Usnavi can sometimes be so tense over so that Ruben often ends up calling it quits, though Usnavi’s tried to insist he can just push through the nerves. It’s just the unfamiliarity, not actual fear or anything, but they’ve gotten into arguments about that before so he doesn’t push that line of reasoning any more and accepts it as something he’ll work very gradually towards. Today, though, he thinks this much will feel good.

Vanessa reaches into the drawer to get the lube and passes it over, drawing lines across his collarbone in lazy strokes while she watches Ruben pour probably more than he needs over his fingers. He pushes inside Usnavi so slowly it almost hurts more just from the waiting than if he went too fast. Usnavi wonders where Ruben draws that kind of patience from. It makes him think about how Ruben must be in his lab, meticulous and steady and focused. 

And he thinks Usnavi worthy of that same level of care. God. Usnavi bites down on the words that want to pour out of his mouth and the sounds that he wants to make, with noticeable effort.

“You’re doing better than I expected,” says Vanessa. “I’m impressed.”

Usnavi’s not sure whether to feel indignant about the doubt or just happy about the praise. He settles for breathing slow, trying to prove he can do this, he can stay quiet, it’s not so difficult.

“You want more?” Ruben asks. He sounds so _different,_ somehow. Usnavi nods.

Ruben adds a second finger and Usnavi shudders with his eyes closed. This is different too, because even though Usnavi’s the one moving himself harder onto Ruben as he adjusts to the stretch he’s keenly aware that the situation here is he’s still just _letting_ himself be fucked, not actually the active party in any of this. “ _God_ , Ruben, that’s - wait, fuck, no!” 

Too late: Ruben’s slowly pulling out, plucking a tissue out the box to wipe his hands while he shakes his head in exaggerated disappointment, though Usnavi can see a smile trying to creep through. Ruben’s a bad actor.

“And you were doing so well, too,” he says sadly, tossing the tissue at the trashcan and missing by about half the length of the room. “Hm. How do you think we should punish him, Vanessa?”

Usnavi doesn’t know if he likes the sound of _that_ , but Vanessa pats his shoulder reassuringly just once and he settles back down. They know he doesn’t like anything too painful, doesn’t like anyone being too mean, and of course they wouldn’t do anything actually bad to him. Usnavi is fine.

“Well, two things I know about Usnavi,” she says. “He’s bad at being quiet, point already proven, and he’s bad at being patient.”

“Ah,” says Ruben, grinning. “So…make him wait?”

“I think so, says Vanessa, pulling Ruben into a kiss. She bites very deliberately at Ruben’s lower lip as she lets him go. “And make him watch, too.”

Never mind. Usnavi is screwed.

***

Hell is trying to sit still and silent while Vanessa is naked in Ruben’s lap literally _right next to him,_ whispering in Ruben’s ear something Usnavi can’t hear. Ruben laughs, nods his head, gives a satisfied moan that sounds very, very put on but is no less hot for being exaggerated.

Nobody is even _looking_ at Usnavi. It’s just they look so amazing, and he wants to be involved. Nobody is touching him and he gets the impression he’s not gonna be allowed to do it himself but if he reminds them he’s good at this then maybe they’ll want to let him get in on it.

Except that when he tries to angle in just to touch them literally anywhere, Ruben gently pushes him away, biting at Vanessa’s ear without even glancing in his direction. Vanessa doesn’t even acknowledge him at all. It makes Usnavi feel kind of like a wayward puppy trying to play when everyone’s too busy to give him attention.

He tries again, just in case.

“If you can’t stay still by yourself,” says Ruben, in a patient, promising sort of voice. “I will find a way to _make_ you still.”

He sort of ruins the impact by adding, “if you’re okay with that”, but he can’t help it that he’s sweet.

“Green as hell!” Usnavi says, probably too enthusiastic, and Ruben stands to rummage through a drawer, which in this room could result in _anything_ but he just comes out with two of his patterned, ridiculous neckties. Now _this_ is something Usnavi’s already experienced, from way back before Ruben was even a player in this game. It’s been a while. Vanessa watches from his side, still not touching.

Ruben presses one of Usnavi’s wrists against the headboard and loosely loops the soft material round it, but then just holds it there with one hand and tilts Usnavi’s chin with the other to look at him.

“You can talk for now. This is definitely okay?” he asks, and his voice has lost the undertone he’s been trying to keep up all night. He just sounds like Ruben always sounds, attentive and a little bit uncertain.

“Peachy keen,” says Usnavi.

“And you remember the color system, yeah? Green is good and yellow is talk about it and red means we let you out right away.”

“No stress, I got it,” says Usnavi. Ruben winds the tie a few times between the metal bar of the headboard and Usnavi’s wrist, but stops before he secures it into a knot.

“You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, right?” he asks anxiously.

“Ruben,” says Vanessa. “Are _you_ uncomfortable with this?”

“No!” he says. “No. I am extremely into this. I just want him to know he’s safe with me, you know?”

“I always know that, hermoso,” Usnavi says. Ruben relaxes, just a fraction. “And I swear I’ll tell you if I start to feel weird about it. But I am all _about_ this right now, so tie me up, Scotty.”

Ruben laughs and shakes his head like to clear it. He ties off the knot and moves to Usnavi’s other wrist. “Okay, babe, time for you to stop talking again.”

He’s picked back up the scene voice and Usnavi suddenly realises that he’s been mimicking _Vanessa_ , mixed with the cadence of Ruben’s normal speech. Something about that sends a bubble of joy expanding through Usnavi’s chest, though he can’t explain quite why.

The restraints when they are finished aren’t tied particularly neatly, but they are tied well, in that Usnavi can’t make them shift when he pulls at them just to check. Ruben’s looking at him kinda concerned, so Usnavi jumps his eyebrows suggestively to show that it’s all good, and Ruben turns away so Usnavi won’t see him suppress a smile. Usnavi can always tell, though.

“Okay,” says Ruben. “You want us to do our worst?”  
  
Ah, fuck.

***

 _Jesus_ , why did he agree to this? It’s so good, it’s so maddening. They keep bringing him close and then just leaving him adrift and he’s been teased before but he’s never had to wait this long, he’s never been denied this much.

Vanessa, riding him so they never actually fuck but he can feel her all around him anyway, and even though she’s putting out this vibe like she’s just using his body to get herself off, it’s still a glorious building pressure all through his lower body. And the idea that he’s just being used, turns out he kinda likes that, that he’s just here to give her a good time like she deserves. When he arcs up into it with a loud groan, though, she moves back as he moves forwards, leaves him behind completely, straining towards the unfinished crescendo that’s slowly dying down again.

He’s so frustrated. He’s so turned on. It gets worse every time, they get harsher every time, even the barest noise enough to take their hands off him again.

Ruben, licking over and over the tip of Usnavi’s dick and never going down, barely tracing with the very point of his tongue but persistent enough to bring him shivering right to the peak, and then he whimpers and it’s gone.

Vanessa, fingertips lightly skating all over his shaft and never taking hold, light and almost ticklish and after long enough of that there’s a rising, tightening feeling all over him but then he gasps too loud and the whole thing starts again.

And there’s nothing at all he can do about it. Noises of complaint or desire or any words at all just send them to each other, and this time they do look at him, Vanessa’s eyes on his while Ruben sucks at her nipple or Ruben glancing over while Vanessa jerks him off. They don’t have to wait and Usnavi is just tied there, watching.

It might go on for hours. He can’t tell. He’s been stuck suspended at the edge for a long while now, untouched and overwrought with Vanessa kneeling over him, Ruben sat across his thighs behind her fingering her fast and hard. Vanessa is _right there,_ making such gorgeous noises, and Usnavi can’t push up and take her like he wants, not with Ruben pinning his legs down.

Either Usnavi is shaking or he can just feel every dust mote in the barely-shifting air passing across his skin like vibrations, he can’t tell which. He can feel everything, maybe, each individual strand of Vanessa’s hair crackling across his chest like a miniature shot of lightning as she moves into Ruben’s touch, each individual thread in the sheets underneath him, each individual nerve alive and humming underneath his skin. It makes him want to scream, kinda, except the noise he’s actually making is just this pitchy, broken whine and he’s squirming so hard he almost throws Ruben off his legs. He strains uselessly at the ties around his wrists.

Ruben says something but Usnavi can’t hear it, until Ruben raises up a little and says more harshly “Usnavi, color!”

“Green green green green fuck fuck fuck this is fucking incredible,” he babbles and now he’s let words start coming out he doesn’t think they’re gonna stop, like there was a backlog from where they’d made him be quiet before and now he’s gotta make up for it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know, be quiet, but I _can’t_ when you’re both doing that, you’re so goddamn hot together. I can’t believe I get to see you like this all the time whenever we want to, how is that possible, how has that happened, how have I not come yet, fucking _green_ please don’t stop -’

“Holy shit, Vanessa,” says Ruben, wonderingly. “Look what we _did_ to him.”

“I wanna watch you both, I wanna see him make you come, Vanessa, you always look so fucking good when he touches you-“

“Jesus, Usnavi,” says Vanessa, then “ _Jesus, Ruben_ -“ because he’s started moving his fingers with a sudden, intense purpose . She presses back into him and he sucks a kiss into her neck, staring straight at Usnavi while he does it. There’s something new behind his eyes that could almost be called dangerous if it weren’t so agonizingly loving. 

“Come on, Vanessa,” Ruben growls, _actually growls_ , holy shit. “He wants a show, so give him a show.”

“You’re amazing, Vanessa, you’re beautiful, I still can’t believe you’re dating me, I’m so _lucky_. I love you, I love you-“

“Come on,” says Ruben against her neck in a cracking voice. “Come on, _come on_ , do it-“

“Fuck,” she says, wide-eyed at the double outpouring of need. “You two are just- fuck, yes, _yes_ -“

She cuts off into a quiet wordless shout, pushes Ruben’s hand up hard with her own, rocks on his fingers with all her muscles tightened before her balance gives out. Ruben catches her and holds her through it. Usnavi revels for a second but he’s started now and he needs more.  


“You too, Ruben, please, anywhere you want, you can do anything, you can fuck me or I’ll suck your dick or you can come on my face, please, please-“

Ruben helps Vanessa to the side then moves up, a knee on either side of Usnavi’s chest and starts stroking himself, face intense and set. “Keep going,” he says, “keep talking. You’ve got such a lovely voice, Usnavi, let me hear it.”

“We used to pretend you were with us,” Usnavi gasps, not even knowing where that memory suddenly appears from. “Before we were dating you. She used to tell me to imagine it was you touching me, called me by your name when we fucked.”

Ruben breaks character and stills his hand just for a second. “Wait, for real?”

“For real, I wanted you so bad and she knew it, always used to tease me about it. I wanted you before I even knew I liked guys. I’d think about you all the time. Still do, both of you.”

“I figured it out before I even met you, he liked you so damn much,” Vanessa tells Ruben softly. She trails her hands up and down Usnavi’s thighs.

“Fuck, says Ruben, in a tight voice. “ _Fuck_ , Usnavi. What the hell am I supposed to do with that information? Fuck.”

Usnavi lets his mouth drop open just a little and closes his eyes, indicating just exactly what he can do with it. Ruben gets it, groans, comes in four long streaks hot across Usnavi’s face and bitter in his mouth then lets himself roll to the side, dropping a hundred tiny kisses into Usnavi’s hair. 

“I love you, I love you,” he keeps saying under his breath, voice wrecked.

“You’re not supposed to be crying in this one, Ruben,” Vanessa says fondly.

“I’m not,” denies Ruben, squeaky and tearful. He coughs and tries again in something closer to his scene voice. “I’m not.”

Usnavi loves them so much, he loves them, he’s going to lose his shit if nobody touches him soon.  
  
“I need to come,” he says. “Please, let me come?”

“What do you think, Ruben? Has he earned it?”

“I don’t know,” says Ruben slowly. “I mean. He did talk before we said he could. Maybe we should make him wait again.”

“No,” Usnavi begs, despairing. “No, yellow, for real this is too much now, I need it, it _hurts-“_

“Hey, okay, okay,” comforts Ruben. He rests a hand on Usnavi’s stomach, which spasms under his palm. “Since you asked so nicely.”

Oh, thank god. Usnavi lets his head fall back, eyes closed, and waits. There’s a pause where maybe Vanessa and Ruben have some kind of silent conversation and when he looks up to see what’s taking so long both of them are positioned just above him, kissing each other deeply. Which is great, and all, but its not helping Usnavi any.

“Are you gonna - ¡ay, dios mio! _”_ because they’ve moved and they’re still kinda making out but now they’re doing it _around_ him, mouthing at his dick hot and wet and skilful and both at the same time, Usnavi can’t handle it. And he can’t handle when Vanessa reaches back up to rake nails across his chest, she knows he loves that, and he can’t handle Ruben working a finger back inside him where he’s still slick from earlier. Usnavi is pretty sure the human body wasn’t made to withstand this much sensation all at once. He doesn’t even feel like he’s inside a body any more. He’s a tuning fork vibrating to their frequency, it’s enough to shatter glass, and Usnavi, who breaks as their tongues meet curling round him.

“Por favor, _”_ he rambles through it, loud and longing. “Ay, por favor, es tan bueno, se siente tan bien, los amo los amo los amo _-“_

He’s never come for this _long_ before, it feels eternal, right up until he stops being aware of anything at all. There’s a chance he might’ve blacked out for a second, or at least forgotten how to process anything, because when his brain fizzles back into life Vanessa’s gone and he’s got one wrist already untied. Ruben’s tugging at the second tie with slightly frantic, fumbling fingers that get slower and steadier when he sees Usnavi blinking awareness back into himself.

“Did you just pass out?” he says, sounding worried and more than a little bit gleeful at once. “Did we seriously just _orgasm you unconscious_?”

Usnavi wants to say _shut up_ or _so_ ** _that_** _was fucking insane_ or _I love you_ but it feels like he used up all his words because all that comes out is ‘nnngh’. Probably he should feel debauched or something, covered in his own come and Ruben’s still all over his face, Vanessa’s scratch-marks light pink on his chest and red rings around his wrist from pulling at the ties. He feels blessed.

Vanessa reappears with a cloth. ” _Told_ you he was fine, Ruben.”

Ruben shrugs, then disappears off to wash his hands. Vanessa sits beside Usnavi, cleans his face with the tenderest touch he’s ever felt, mutters an apology when she moves to his stomach and his whole body jolts away from it. She lets him take over on clean-up, his system too strung-out to let anyone else touch him just now.

“I really wanna kiss you,” she says. “But do you need a minute?”

Usnavi nods, and she lets him lay by himself while his senses settle. Ruben comes back in and sits behind Vanessa on the bed, encircling her with his legs.

“So how did I do?” he asks her, eagerly.  
  
“Do you need an answer to that? I think Usnavi is broken,” she says, amused. Usnavi raises his middle finger, but to be honest she might not be wrong. “Nailed it. You did good, babe.”

Ruben presses his lips together to hide his smile and buries his face in Vanessa’s shoulder. It’s crazy he can go back to this in such a short time compared to how he was a few minutes ago.

“You did good too, Vanessa,” he says. She looks startled, and incredibly happy, bringing the back of Ruben’s hand up to her mouth to kiss it. They should tell her that more often. She’s so in charge all the time, it’s too easy to forget that she likes to hear she’s loved too, though Usnavi knows she knows they both adore her.

They look just as perfect together like this as they were earlier: Ruben is combing his fingers through Vanessa’s hair, twisting it with surprising skill into the braid she always wears to sleep. She murmurs “look at you both, my boys”, slipping the hair elastic off her wrist to pass to Ruben, who fastens it then runs his hand softly down the finished braid.

Oh, fuck oversensitive. They’re all the way over there and Usnavi _misses_ them. He makes a _pay attention to me!_ noise and Vanessa laughs. “We finally did it, Ruben. We actually fucked him speechless.”

“I’ll alert the media,” says Ruben.

Usnavi can’t even argue, he just does a grabby-hands movement towards them instead. They fit themselves around him on either side. It still makes his skin sing a little too harshly, but he doesn’t mind. Usnavi is filled with love and surrounded from all angles by love, the only thing he’s ever wanted from life delivered in full and then some.


	12. tres vidas en imágenes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: doin' something a bit different for today's chapter! because i'm a sucker for some multimedia. probably a one-off because i ran out of ideas for it, but i'm always on tumblr for art prompts or general requests!]

Three iPhone Wallpapers  
(1. Vanessa, 2. Ruben, 3. Usnavi)

***

Three ways to stay organised  
(1. Ruben, 2. Vanessa, 3. Usnavi)

***

Group chat

***

Three ways to take a coffee break  
(1. Usnavi, 2. Ruben, 3. Vanessa)

 

***

Group chat 

***

Three notes to wake up to  
(1. Ruben, 2. Usnavi, 3. Vanessa) 

***

Group chat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: yes it would be better if i had a better camera/scanner than just my iphone but dedicated though i am to this fic, i'm not quite dedicated enough to go out and buy new technology. DEAL WITH IT.]


	13. control de veneno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: content warning for in depth talk of suicidal feelings (not acted on), past abuse, PTSD. yeah, it's another ruben introspection chapter. about a month into them officially dating.]

There are ghosts tangible and ghosts intangible.

Sometimes it’s easier when it’s Ian. Ian was uncomplicated, despite the fact that what came after was a mess that Ruben’s still untangling. Ian didn’t have the patience for manipulation without violence, only half-heartedly committing to anything more long game before devolving into the physical. Quicker to just pick someone up and throw them where you want them, more certainty in making real the threats. Things unabstracted like Ian letting his gaze wander slow down Ruben’s body and saying “did you _really_ think I wouldn’t be able to find you?” No subtlety to let symbolism go by unexplained, that guy. Probably talks the whole way through movies to make sure you know how clever he is for spotting the plot twists, assuming he doesn’t strangle you for getting the wrong kind of popcorn first.

Ruben’s not saying it’s easy in a sort of large-scale sense of things that a person can think about, _make coffee, put on pants, remember the guy who tortured you, eat breakfast_ kind of way, though sometimes it slips into that horrifying mundanity because he’s so used to it. What he means is, it’s just really hard to categorise it as anything more benign or less than it was, and Ruben functions better with a well-organised internal referencing system.

Jason was more difficult for a while, when the initial sense of permanent danger was soothed and Ruben had to deal with other mental ravines that needed filling, or at the very least a safety railing so he’d stop falling down them. He thinks they talked about Jason more in therapy than they did Ian, because Jason didn’t go into any of this with the express purpose of hurting Ruben but he did anyway and didn’t care enough to stop, and because from the very start Ruben had been operating at confusing cross-purposes, entirely aware that he was being used but still so convinced they were friends, for reasons that were as incomprehensible then as they are now. Naivety, maybe. Or desperation. Harder to pigeonhole. Not an evil guy, Ruben doesn’t think, because evil implies intention, but just as dangerous, just as haunting.

But that stuff gets easier too when there’s things that can be used as comparison, knowing what friends actually are. Not just Usnavi with his straightforward sweetness and Vanessa fierce and protective, but like Sonny, who inherited Usnavi’s ability to take a monologue and run halfway round the world with it and so isn’t particularly put off on the many occasions Ruben doesn’t have anything to say in return. Like Nina who he’s only known outside of anecdotes for a month so he’s still trying to work her out, but there’s a passion that seems to translate across the gap between his science and her literature to a surprising amount of common ground, and she has a suspiciously delicate approach to his boundaries that he's been meaning to ask her about. People who don’t mind that he’s less comfortable with them and less confident with them, that he’s still only just learning to seek them out of his own accord, because turns out friendship doesn’t have to mean being everything to someone all the time with no problems. He can be bad at this and still succeed slowly, not everything has to be innate. Takes some of the pressure off.

So Jason and Ian things can be quantified and combated in the real world. Waking up in the middle of the night to frantically pull a drawer open and find something to cover up with, that’s empirical: he can’t be back there because he’s here, and he can’t be seen because he can feel that he is covered. It isn’t an ideal system because there’s concrete realities that filter through the wrong perspective. He remembers painfully the aftermath of the time he was lost so sudden and deep in a flashback that he called Usnavi ‘Ian’, though he doesn’t remember the specifics of the incident that caused it. The senses can be tricked. Even then there’s ways to come back, neutral sense data like the texture of fabrics, the sound of voices that have always been safe and familiar smells of coffee or perfume, and when his sight finally comes back to the right part of the timeline, a heartbreak on their faces that Jason never would have cared enough to wear. Ruben counts evidence till he claws his way out of the past and he doesn’t dare think too far into the future but the present is good for now.

Good or not, just like senses can be tricked, thoughts can be too. He loses memories and gains false ones. The nightmares where it’s not him on the table and he hovers as a useless and unseen spectator while Vanessa or Usnavi scream for him to help them feel as real as what actually happened, which now only comes to him in fragments. At first he couldn’t forget a second of it, not for months, and then when he started to lose pieces he picked at it like reopening a healing wound because something like that shouldn’t be forgotten, surely? And because it had been everything for so long that the idea of creating new clean spaces inside of him was almost as terrifying as the idea of feeling like this forever. But eventually he couldn’t make the excuse to himself that he was just trying to process it any more, and he wanted so badly to be better, and he let his brain let go of the pieces that it hurt too much to hold onto, though he knows they’re still there buried. It was time to let them lie.

The scars are ugly but almost a comfort sometimes: he didn’t make it up. It happened, it was real, and then it healed. Messily, yes, not traceless, but the body tries its best, the mind tries its best, Ruben tries his best.

There are things which it’s harder to put a box around and designate _not real any more._ Like today when he thinks he feels fine and he’s cleaning his apartment and humming out of tune to himself while he picks up a cloth and some Windex and a version of his own voice in his head that he hasn’t heard for almost a year says _drink it._ He drops the bottle.

_Drink it, make it stop, drink it._

“Um, no?” he says out loud, too confused to be freaked out. He doesn’t want to. Didn’t really want to even then, but either way he’s not felt the need to escape from anything recently, he’s been happy. Probably his idea of happiness is still desperately sad compared to most people’s, but it’s hard-earned and it’s his own.

This is the unknowable ghost. Nothing can be trusted completely, not even your own thoughts. It's not only Ian that makes his brain unsafe. That was a difficult lesson to learn. And just when Ruben thinks he’s struck up a deal with himself and might have a grasp on whatever’s whirring away up there, just when Ruben has a new job that he's enjoying and a life that's all his own and a  _relationship,_ just as he's beginning to wonder if happiness could mean more than just the absence of unhappiness for him, it goes and does things like this.

Sometimes he wonders if he should’ve changed his name before he moved here, in case Jason ever takes it into his head to pay a visit (or, god forbid, Ian, apparently still thankfully non-existent). But the process of moving was exhausting enough itself without that added paperwork and besides, _Ruben Marcado_ has always belonged to him and means himself in every edition he’s existed as, and a man has to have at least one certain thing even if it’s only his name. Nothing else can be relied on.

Changing his name won’t help him if this old version of Ruben is what tracks him down in his new home. It’s hard to sort this into his databases, because _be kind to yourself_ keeps warring with _you would’ve done to yourself exactly what Ian threatened to do to you, so how are you better than him_ , though he knows the comparison is unfair. How can he tell himself the threat isn’t real when the threat is _him_? A voice in his own head can't be chased away by sense alone. It’s almost possible to feel sorry for Jason, if it weren’t so much his fault that Ruben has to experience this kind of internal betrayal of systems firsthand. (That doesn't stop him feeling sorry for him anyway. Ruben hates that he can pity him.)

He hasn’t told anyone, not even his old therapist, how much he wanted to hurt himself, just as he hasn’t told them how much he wanted to hurt Ian. Keeps secret the contents of the cruel whispers in his head of all the terrible things Ruben deserves to feel, words that came from nobody but himself. Keeps secret how vivid he can dream blood that isn't his. Ruben can be dangerous, Ruben can be poisonous, Ruben knows the dark things in the world. People think that he is kind. He wants them to be right. These floodgates can't be opened.

And would telling anyone even help? For the moment, there’s nothing in him taking hold of his bones to wander his hands too close to a bottle of pills or his legs too close to a subway platform edge, though he knows so many ways it could be done quickly and with far more chance of success than drinking glass cleaner. It’s just the words that have come back. And they’ve lost their teeth, too, the old arguments wouldn’t be compelling any more. Nobody would have missed him when they all thought he was dead already, but they’d miss him now. It would have hurt less than living then. Sometimes days in a row go by where Ruben doesn’t hurt at all now. Sometimes he even forgets. 

Lose memories, gain memories, Ruben’s temporally displaced. He forgets it ever happened then he forgets that the years in between happened too. Maybe it’s just time trying to balance itself out. He feels fine, is the thing, the voice only an echo like so many things are echoes, negative thought by default. He’s been slacking on the techniques he learnt at therapy, too caught up in life. It's so tiring having to get better all the time when he just wants to _be_ better, but he can’t deny the effectiveness and it's no surprise he needs them still. The last couple of months have been strange and this is just older lifelong synapses firing off in a panic at the idea of change, even change for the good. It feels more human than he usually gives himself credit for. He can see so clearly how people get stuck so often. It's the thing that's driven him to defiance over and over throughout his whole life, to working through fear or exhaustion and his own desire for the familiar and the people who will always doubt people like him. Ruben will not be subject to habitual thinking. Ruben is going to change the world, even if it goes against his nature, even though it gets him in the worst sorts of trouble. Stagnation has no place inside his life.

As much of a fragile thing as he thinks he might come across sometimes, Ruben is tougher than he looks. This isn’t going to send him spiralling. He exhales the tension, trusts that his heartrate will re-regulate back to normal in time, and picks up the dropped bottle of Windex.

_Drink it drink it drink it._

_“_ No,” he says, out loud again.

Once his cleaning supplies are safely hidden away, Ruben takes his journal, an actual journal that he started keeping on the recommendation of his therapist, not just a notebook full of formulas and half-finished epiphanies. Writes _had one of those thoughts telling me to do something dumb_ , draws a box round it. Rethinks, crosses it out, writes _passing suicidal impulses_ , which is more clinical and also more honest. It makes his stomach hurt, but he can’t fight something if he doesn’t dare name it. He writes today’s date underneath and then draws a box round the new words, because there’s not much he can do for now but be aware. if there’s a new epiphany to be had here he can let it come in its own time, doesn’t want to self-fulfil a prophecy by dwelling on the problem. Besides, some of his best insights always come together when he finally decides to stop thinking about them.

Ruben spends the afternoon with his plants instead, cooing tender, quiet songs at their leaves as encouragement, which is something he will never, ever admit to anyone he actually does. He flips to a clean new page in his journal and makes detailed notes on all their progress. They’re growing well.


	14. cantamos de amor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: been a while since i updated the one-shots! here's something from an anon prompt on tumblr, for "Ruben singing along to a musical of your choice without knowing Usnavi’s looking at him fondly and recording it for Vanessa". i don't actually know many musicals past the 90s, LMM's work aside, which will probably be obvious from the references. shamelessly meta. pre-everything that went down in _to the bone_ ]

Usnavi's got perfect pitch when it comes to listening but what he sings doesn’t always match up to the gauge in his head, which seems kinda par for the course for his whole life - mouth can’t keep up with his brain, voice can’t keep up with the internal tuning mechanism that lights up green when he’s got the frequency. But he knows where he’s _supposed_ to be and what he lacks in pitch he sure makes up in power, so it doesn’t hold him back.

Usnavi can never remember whether he picked his laundry up and has more than once been halfway down the stairs headedto work before noticing he forgot to put a shirt on but he remembers _everything_ about people and he has a whole library of lyrics in his head, so it makes sense to him that probably people and music must trip the same kind of wires. He knows where other people are supposed to be too when they sing around him but he doesn’t tell most people when they fuck up, even though it’s physically painful to watch the measurements go way into the red. Even imperfect voices have music in them. There's worse kinds of inharmony than technicalities.

He thinks he probably first fell in love with Vanessa because she fit the music of the world around him so well. She never sounds discordant to him, not on the metaphor level when she speaks or in the way she feels, and when she sings for real it makes his whole self hum like the bassline to her melody.Vanessa’s got good range and a good voice. Not perfect, because even the best have off days, but if she wanted she could do something with it, so she’s confident. Which also means he can say _you’re a little sharp_ and have it be constructive instead of an insult, instead of just having to let his bones vibrate with that itchy hollow feeling of _wrong wrong that sounds wrong._ She’ll adjust accordingly with a nod if she’s singing properly, or scowl at him if he does it when she’s just humming to herself because _you do_ ** _realize_** _not everything needs to be worthy of Broadway, right?_

Usnavi disagrees. All the world’s a stage, and Usnavi’s aware they ain’t quite Shakespeare over here but he knows if their story were gonna be anywhere they’d be under those lights. They’re not exactly West Side Story either, there’s no songs for the barrio as he knows it but there’s enough for his dirty, pretty New York city as a whole that it’s sometimes kinda close if you squint. Vanessa gets it really. She knows how to catch a spotlight, with the way her hair flies behind her and the breathless excitement in her face and the way she moves her hips in time a kick bigger than champagne. She’ll take his corrections just like he accepts her comments of _your shoulders need to be looser_ or _back straight, Usnavi_ when they dance, because she’s the expert there.

Ruben, with all the good will in the world, did not strike Usnavi as the music type when they first met. Too still, too stiff, too out of step. He never felt discordant, he didn’t disrupt the rhythm, because he was never musical at all. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a different thing. Usnavi likes to hear his presence anyway, but people and music are the same for Usnavi so he still has to look close for it even if he's happy to accept that Ruben's prose to their poetry.

Ruben’s taste in music is as eclectic as Usnavi’s in terms of genre but nowhere near as expansive and it stalls out completely at a certain point a few years ago just like his taste in movies and TV, like someone cut the cable that connected him to all this stuff.

Well. Someone kind of _did,_ really. Which, movies are the least of it but it’s rough that even things that should be escapism are reminders. Movie nights are near impossible when most of the time they’re watching something Ruben will suddenly reach for the remote and turn it off, or sharply stand and leave the room. There’s a lot they have to see through new eyes: Vanessa stopped watching those CSI shows she used to love after Ruben showed up because she says they make her feel kind of sick these days, but there’s mines hidden even in things they think are innocuous.

Even without that, Usnavi struggles more and more to sit still and pay attention through anything longer than a 20-minute sitcom episode. He thought he’d grow out of his focus problems but it seems like it only gets worse, because now he has to use it all up on important rent-is-due-remember-to-eat things, not fun movietime things. Still, he finds he can follow stuff if it’s already familiar, and even if a song is new to him he can _always_ follow something with a beat. So mostly they do music nights instead, a soundtrack the safest thing to work with, and Usnavi gets to bring the stage to them like he’s introducing a close friend, though he’s never actually seen a live performance himself. Sometimes they’ll listen off the laptop for newer stuff but more often than not, they go to old, old classics: Usnavi’s parents records on the old player, or just Usnavi and Vanessa, who know them all by heart by now.

“Oh! I remember this one,” Ruben says sometimes and that’s something that all three of them have, a shared childhood even though Ruben didn’t grow up with them and even though Ruben never sings along.

It sometimes feels like Usnavi’s sharing a piece of his soul, built up in a collaged multimedia soundtrack of vinyl crackling and radio static, cassette mixtapes and rewinding, rewinding, rewinding VHS classics taped commercials and all off their tiny old tv to mimic their movements and learn their lyrics. Not everything can be a real performance if you’re too broke for Broadway but that doesn’t mean he didn’t learn like he’s living it, glide and step and then step and glide _,_ though it’s still always the salsa his mama taught him that his feet default back to.

And slowly it all bleeds over to Ruben. 

The first time they heard him it was just one word, and a drunk one at that, but Usnavi’s ears are never wrong, Ruben _can_ sing. Which, if he didn’t already know so much about him, Usnavi would wonder why it took so long to find that out. Definitely wonders why Ruben insists that he can’t, and thinks that might just be a cover for why he generally _doesn’t_. It seems like a sad way to live. Usnavi’s never not humming or beatboxing or freestyling or singing, and Vanessa loops in on a lei-lo-lai improv or switches up a song she knows to fit whatever Usnavi’s making up.

Slowly, this is what they learn: Ruben can sing but can't keep time for shit while he does it because whenever he tries too hard on that he falls all out of tune. Ruben will sing the things they listen to together in the shower or while he’s cooking and doesn’t mind them being in the room for that, but whatever it is he’s singing when he waters the plants in his apartment is barely audible, and he always stops whenever Usnavi’s in earshot.

Usnavi has a theory on this, after straining for the millionth time trying to pick it up from the other room.

“I’m pretty sure he makes up songs for his plants,”  he tells Vanessa. “Like actually makes them up.”  
  
“Bullshit,” says Vanessa. “He’s just too quiet for us to hear what it is.”  
  
“He’s _always_ quiet, I know what I hear,” Usnavi argues, but Vanessa won’t come round to his side without hard evidence, and he’s just uncertain enough that it makes him agonisingly curious to know for sure.

It’s some kind of ritual for Ruben, anyway, which means eventually he adapts to part of that ritual being Usnavi or Vanessa wandering around his apartment, which means there's finally a morning when Usnavi comes out of Ruben’s bedroom all showered and freshly dressed and realises Ruben’s not noticed him at all: he’s in the kitchen, it’s about the time of day he usually does his green-finger thing, and he’s still singing.

Usnavi tiptoes to the open kitchen door to listen, heart going at the speed of sound, and he has to shove a corner of his shirt in his mouth to stop from laughing when he finally figures out what Ruben’s gardening jams are. Oh, man, Vanessa has to hear this. It feels a little like eavesdropping to pull his phone out and start recording but if he interrupts he knows Ruben will stop and this is maybe the best thing ever.

Usnavi was only half wrong. There’s parts of songs he knows they’ve listened to together, variations around a theme: _blossom of snow may you —_ into _two blooms for a penny, who will buy my_ —into _everything's coming up roses for—_ , muddled lines that fade to indistinct and semi-tuneless humming and then picks back up at random. Except now instead of the lyrics Ruben’s mumbling melodic recitations of plant names, in English in Spanish in what sounds like Latin, and then he sings about raindrops on roses and then Usnavi’s pretty sure he’s singing about the optimum PH of soil.

"Oh my _God_ ," Usnavi mouths to himself giddily. Ruben’s such a _nerd_.

Ruben when he thinks nobody’s watching him dances like how he gestures, the same as the way he moves when he gets excited about whatever he’s saying with his hands tumbling and rolling like a sign language. Usnavi watches closely, trying to interpret. There’s still so much they don’t know about Ruben. Is this one of those things he used to do and is relearning, or has he always been too self-conscious to sing? Or is it something he never had at all before and it’s just their influence? That’s a thought, the idea that maybe they’re the ones who are putting the music in him like he’s adapting to their medium, and Usnavi gets so excited about it that he can’t help but make a gleeful sound under his breath. Ruben’s hands drop back down to his sides and his eyes snap to the door, where Usnavi is still recording and grinning wider than his own face.

“Good morning, starshine,” Usnavi says. 

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Ruben lies, looking deeply embarrassed. 

“Uh-huh,” says Usnavi, and then he takes Ruben’s hand to spin him, singing “ _There's one rose sweeter than any that grows!_ ” at the plant Ruben was fiddling with as he does.

“This is mint, actually,” says Ruben, still flushed but smiling. “Your botanical knowledge is shameful, you’d be fucked if we dropped you in the wilderness.”

“It’s a miracle I’ve survived this long,” Usnavi agrees. He plucks off a mint leaf just to hear Ruben’s outraged _hey!_ , like they don’t use the kitchen herbs specifically for food purposes anyway, and chews on it while he sends the video to Vanessa with Ruben’s reluctant permission. What a beautiful start to the morning. Today is going to be a good one, he can feel it.

Hesitantly, Ruben starts back up with the mumble-singing again even though Usnavi’s still in the room. Usnavi comes in with a quiet beat and doesn’t mind at all that Ruben can’t keep time with it, because he’s ringing clear in tune and Usnavi’s internal gauge is the same happy shade of _this sounds right_  it always is with Vanessa.

Vanessa always promises Ruben they’ll teach him how to dance and even though they keep trying he never does pick up the steps, but they have fun anyway. Usnavi doesn’t think Ruben will ever take centre-stage on the floor at the club or let anyone but Vanessa and Usnavi hear his voice but he’ll sing songs they listen to together on quiet evenings, he’ll sing songs on quiet mornings to the plants he loves so much and while he washes dishes with his sleeves rolled up. They try to teach him how to dance and he says he can’t get his head round footwork and rhythm at the same time, just like he can’t keep time and keep in tune all at once, but it’s okay that he’s not the best at it. There’s music in him somewhere.


	15. no me despiertes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: yet another prompt fic that ended up a few thousand words longer than i meant it to. SELF RESTRAINT, SOPHIA. for a-classic-fool, who requested a sleepy, cuddly ruben - i sort of missed some of the other details of the prompt but that was the most important part anyway. 
> 
> shoutout to cjwritesfanfiction on tumblr for informing me about what the hell kind of thing chemistry students even do, because my film studies ass is clueless <3 and shoutout to tomorrowsrain for being such a master of the past/present juxtaposition that i ended up doing my own]

**November, 2003.**

Ruben blinks out of focus reverie in the kitchen long after his mom and sisters have gone to bed. Three am silence sees the scene like this: Ruben the last one awake, and six textbooks bookmarked with countless post-it notes, and four empty coffee cups.

His ma says that drinking so much caffeine at his age will stunt his growth. There’s no data to support that theory. He’d be small compared to everyone at college no matter what. 

College, where he has to go to class in - fuck! - five hours. There’s an empty bed upstairs and he wants nothing more than to fall into it. He was up till four last night.His ma says that staying up so late will also stunt his growth.

As he starts to stack his books something twists in him, the same sensation as before in a new color like the adrenaline confusion after a long sprint. The burst of excited energy that carried him till now is faded, but there’s still something compelling him to _go go go do more keep going_ : mental freerunning for the fun of it turning into _better_ _run for your freakin’ life, Marcado_. Ruben is fifteen years old, and the smallest and the youngest in his class, and apparently, potentially, the best. As long as he doesn’t screw it up.

He sits back down and opens a book at random again. The flow has stuttered out now, fingers heavy around the pen, mind heavy with overcrowding, but Ruben’s always worked through that feeling before. His bed is still calling him, but he works through that too.

***

**October, 2017.**

Ruben blinks out of focus reverie in the kitchen long after Usnavi and Vanessa have gone to bed. There’s piles of papers and a few journal subscriptions and his first year’s pre-lab notebooks and his second year’s post-lab analyses all around him, and for some reason Usnavi is stood in front of him in his pajamas, breaking the haze of silence that Ruben’s been lost in for however many hours.

“If you keep staying up this late you’ll get so tired your brain will melt out of your eyeballs and you’ll die,” Usnavi tells him.

“That sounds medically unlikely.”

“It’s a real science fact.”

“I’ve told you before, just saying that doesn’t make it true,” Ruben disagrees. Usnavi shrugs: _I tried to warn you._ "I want to finish these.”

Usnavi comes to stand behind him, leans his chin on Ruben’s shoulder and reaches one arm around to move a finger over the red pen annotations Ruben’s making in the margins as if he’s reading braille. “For tomorrow?”

“Not till Friday.”

“That’s four days away,” says Usnavi disapprovingly. “And it’s hella late.”

“Why aren’t _you_ in bed, then?” Ruben asks, and Usnavi answers “I woke up and you weren’t there so I couldn’t get back to sleep” with the easy candor that he says that kind of thing, like he doesn’t even know how sweet it makes him sound.

“I’ll be five minutes,” Ruben says. “I’ll just finish this one.”

And he really does mean it, but as Usnavi leaves the room Ruben’s already drifted attention back to the pre-lab he’s marking. He really wants to have at least this notebook completely done before he sleeps. Amara’s work always takes a little extra effort to read through - it’s almost illegible in places - but the familiar way her words hover above or below but never on the line, the way that sometimes the uneven letters flip themselves backwards always makes Ruben smile in fond recognition.

It might make Ruben smile, but it makes Dr Marcado cringe. Precision is key - hell, a badly-written symbol could be the difference between calcium, cobalt or cadmium. Too much margin for error. Not that he thinks Amara is actually going to mix these up in a practical, but he’s not supposed to take that chance.

At the same time, though, it seems so unfair to lose marks on that basis. Amara can’t help it that her writing does that. And why hasn’t this been brought to the school’s attention yet, in fact? Why isn’t there any kind of support in place to make sure she can complete her work to the best of what Ruben knows to be her extremely competent abilities?

He jots down in his notebook a memo to remind himself to look into the possibilities of digital pre- and post-lab submissions. It’s the smallest of accommodations and he’s not having a student fail just because of something as small as _handwriting_. Not much point living in an age of technological innovation if not to even the playing field.

Abigail who he shares an office with always laughs when he gets intense over things like this. “Give it a couple years,” she says. “You’ll learn to pick out which ones are going places and focus your energy on them, else you’ll only wear yourself out.”

She doesn’t say it unkindly, more as though it’s inarguable. Ruben hasn't considered whether he’ll actually be a teacher long enough to become cynical about it and maybe he’s naive but he’s pretty sure even if he was in this job for a decade he wouldn’t develop that skill. His students aren’t just academic potential to be met or wasted. How many of the ones with what some would probably call the most potential have already come to him in tears on the verge of dropping out only a few months into the academic year, all under the impression that struggling means failure, no gray areas or alternative options? 

And how many people with such quick, quick brains who couldn’t write properly or couldn’t focus and didn’t have any guidance with it just learned to shrug and say “I ain’t ever been the smart one, it’s fine” with a self-deprecating smile when that’s definitely not true? (Ruben knows it stings Usnavi more than he wants to admit to himself that he was never even given a chance, however happy he might be with where he is today.)

Ruben won’t play favorites. It just fucks both sides up, and there’s no way to predict who’ll go far, so everyone’s going to get a fair shot at the best future that Ruben can offer them. Besides, he likes knowing that secretly - or not so secretly, sometimes - _he’s_ a lot of people’s favorite, for putting in extra effort no matter how brilliant the student.

It’s not even really an effort. It’s only small things. Making sure his comments are encouraging rather than critical, looking into alternatives for Amara’s written submissions, which reminds him that he needs to draft an email to Carlos who’s been ill and has missed three classes in a row, which reminds him he's been meaning to find a better way to get content to his students on days that they can’t be there. God knows he understands that sometimes leaving the house just isn't an option. In fact, maybe he should think of some kind of solution for the days he has to call in sick himself. There must be some way around the problem that isn’t as disruptive to the curriculum.

One quick final task turns into two turns into working as usual turns into Vanessa, stood framed by shadow in the doorway looking majorly unimpressed.

“Ruben,” she says, sternly.

“I know, I know. I said I’d just be five minutes.”

“Yeah, nearly an hour ago. Usnavi’s all fidgety about you overdoing it and won’t go back to sleep, which means now I’m awake too, and I would really like to _not_ be awake, so will you just come to fucking bed already? It’s gone three.” 

Damn. he didn’t realise it had got so late. It’s too easy to get carried away.

“I can decide my own bedtime,” he says.

“Fine," Vanessa shrugs. “Don’t expect any sympathy from me when you’re dead on your feet tomorrow.” 

She blows him a kiss as she leaves. He makes a motion like he’s catching it with one hand because he likes the way she fights down a smile when he does that, but stubbornly picks up his pen in his other hand at the same time. Late nights are just part of his life, he can handle it.

Except now the flow is gone, and in its place he’s thinking about how tempting lying in a bed sounds after sitting hunched over a table for hours, Usnavi at his back and Vanessa in his arms. Autopilot moves Ruben’s legs following Vanessa to the bedroom. He doesn’t try to resist the call.

***

**February, 2016.**

Ruben is dragged out of not enough sleep by his brand new phone, a replacement for the one Ian threw in the toilet, and it’s ringing and ringing.

He just barely opens one eye to check caller ID, then lets it play out to voicemail. It’s pretty obvious what Jason is gonna say: _where are you? We need to hurry._

It’s a full hour before his alarm’s due to go off, but duty - well, Jason, but same thing - calls. Now Ruben’s awake he just wants to get the day over with, except currently he’s not even doing well at the part where the day starts. How the hell does Jason _function_ when his body’s constantly running around making the world a worse place all night ? Ruben’s trying to will himself to sitting and his body is refusing to respond.

He’s pretty sure he used to enjoy going to work, even when he was feeling wiped out. There’s so much to do today, for his legit job as well as for his secret side project. He’s pretty sure he was excited about all this stuff once. Sure, the pressure was intense the first year or so, when they were skipping from temporary fix to fix for Jason and before Ruben learnt how to do two workloads at once. And the stress had come back like a persistent rash the several occasions Ian started to build up resistance and they had to make adjustments to the dose or the formula, that was rough too. But Ruben can sustain himself a long time just on hope and on knowing that he’s doing something worthwhile. Blackout, despite the name, was a bright glowing beacon at the end of a tunnel he spent years travelling through. His first success, only waiting for him to put the finishing touches on.

But, Jason wants a kill drug instead, so all that momentum’s come to a dead stop with no payoff, like braking so hard you get flung through the windshield. Ruben’s still on a fast forward trajectory but not towards a destination. He’s just waiting to see how much the landing will hurt. There’s probably no way this ends well, right?

Now it’s Jason all day every day, and turns out maybe he’s better just as a brief, attractive interruption rather than a constant presence. And now it’s sometimes Ian too, and Ian might not know who Ruben is but he sure as hell knows Ruben’s face, so _that’s_ an uncomfortable prospect. It’s about the only thing that makes Ruben finally pull himself out of bed, hoping like hell he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel on the way to work, and he can barely remember why he ever looked forward to this.

***

**October, 2017.**

Ruben is dragged out of not enough sleep by Usnavi, who is extremely close to his ear, and he’s singing.

“Just call me angel of the mooorning, angel! _”_ he warbles loudly, grinning when Ruben cracks one eye open to glare at him. “Buenos días, ángel _,_ ” he says, and then belts “just touch my cheek before you leave me, _bay_ -beee! _”_

Vanessa pulls a pillow over her head to block out the noise.

“Mnrfff,” says Ruben, disgruntled, and puts a hand over Usnavi’s face in the hope that he’ll find an off switch somewhere.

Usnavi sticks his tongue out so that it presses flat and disgustingly wet against Ruben’s palm and, once Ruben snatches his hand back, says “looks like _someone_ stayed up too late. Looks like _someone_ should listen to his boyfriend more often. Time to face the day!”

“No,” Ruben mutters defiantly. “Not getting up. Go ‘way.”

He cuddles sleepily closer to Vanessa, who is blessedly quiet, and presses his face against her arm. She doesn’t emerge from underneath the pillow.

“If I go, this comes with me,” Usnavi says, and takes a sip from the mug Ruben’s only just noticed his hand, making a face at the lack of milk.

“Nonono,” Ruben says, holding his hand out. “I want it.”

Usnavi moves the mug slowly out of his reach. Ruben follows it till he finds himself sitting up. He looks down at himself then back at Usnavi accusingly.

“You tricked me,” he says, betrayed.

“I did,” Usnavi confirms happily, but at least he hands the mug over. Ruben spends as long as possible half-dozing into it while he drinks, but once he’s finished and Vanessa starts stirring he figures it’s time to get up, in case she’s still holding a grudge about her interrupted sleep last night.

Today is definitely a two-coffee breakfast day. Ruben has the second one sitting in the kitchen with a plate of toast by his right elbow and Amara's pre-lab still temptingly open on his left.

“Can’t you even take ten minutes for breakfast before you start all that?” Usnavi tuts as he passes the table.

Ruben hadn’t even realized he was writing. “I’m not taking shit from you of all people about overworking.”

“Fair,” Usnavi concedes, and then his face goes all soft. “I’m only teasing, anyway. I’m happy you’re so happy at work, hermoso.”

It takes Ruben’s sleepy brain a few minutes to process that. Is he happy at work? It seems like such a lifetime passed between getting the position and the months he spent getting used to living in New York before he actually started that by the time it rolled around, teaching a summer school class only a couple of weeks after he started dating Vanessa and Usnavi, he was already so overflowing with new feelings that he hadn’t even had space to think about whether he enjoyed the job.

Today is a pretty average day. Seminar with his third years. By this point they’re confident speaking up without Ruben having to facilitate discussion as heavily, so their classes are always lively. Lab with one set of first years and that’s always fun too, because it’s all so new to most of them and he gets to be the one to introduce this whole amazing world of knowledge outside their high school textbooks. He’s running on less than four hours sleep but he’s not fighting with that exhausted part of himself that desperately tries to find an excuse not to have to deal with the day ahead, because it’s totally silent.

All the evidence is there: he’s _actually_ looking forward to it, and between that and the caffeine he can barely remember why he even felt tired in the first place.

***

**April, 2011.**

Ruben struggles through the morning propelled by necessity but sitting back down at his desk after lunch he finds his eyes drifting closed against his will. He’s back to a double workload again: apparently the first formulation of the drug that’s been keeping Jason’s split personality knocked out at night for the last few weeks is already starting to lose effectiveness, and there are too many side-effects anyway, so Ruben’s got a lot on his plate right now. He’s not sure how long he’s been half-napping when he’s startled awake by a message.  


**Jason:  
** \- Have you got anywhere with the new formulation yet?

**Ruben:  
** \- since you asked me about it again less than an hour ago? no, jason, i haven't got anywhere, i was eating lunch.

 **Jason:  
** \- Oh. Ok.  
\- It’s just I don’t know how much longer this dose is going to work on him.

It’s not as simple as just increasing the amount. This was only ever meant to be a temporary fix to buy some time while Ruben works on something more permanent. He knows Jason knows that.

**Ruben:  
** \- i’m doing everything i can.

**Jason:  
** \- Okay. Just hurry. Trust me, we don’t want him getting out.

***

**October, 2017.**

Ruben powers through the morning buoyed by enthusiasm. His third years were on great form today: one of them verbally cited a paper Ruben wrote himself several years ago, and they all cheered at the namedrop then laughed at Ruben when he turned bright red with embarrassed pride. But sitting down at his desk after lunch he finds his energy flagging. He’s trying to bite down a yawn when his phone goes off.

**Vanessa:  
** \- YOU BETTER NOT BE SLEEPING DR MARCADO NO SLACKING ON THE JOB

**Ruben:  
\- ** FUCK YOU IM AWAKE

**Vanessa:  
** \- i dont believe you

Ruben sends a picture of himself, eyes wide, pointing at his face like _see, I'm_ _so_ _awake.  
_

**Vanessa:  
**

Ruben has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. He knows Vanessa knows that.

**Ruben:  
**

**Vanessa:**

\- if you grew your hair out like mine you could hide behind it to take a nap and nobody would know, js

\- not that ive ever done that ofc

\- don’t work too hard this afternoon, ok? <3

 

***

**September, 2010.**

“That doesn’t look comfortable.”

“Hm?” Ruben asks, sitting up from where he’s accidentally found himself resting with his head pillowed on top of his folded arms. Again.

“The amount of times I catch you doing this, I’m starting to think you might actually live here,” says Connie.

“Shh,” Ruben says, finger to lips. “They’ll start charging me rent if they find out.”

“Don’t you ever go home and sleep properly, Ruben?”

“Ah, but science doesn’t sleep, Connie, so neither can I,” he answers.

Connie laughs, but she gives him a quick, concerned look as she leaves, tells him he needs to take a real break at some point. She’s sweet, but Ruben’s doing fine. In the month since he’s started working at Independence Memorial his tendency to be the first one in and the last to leave is veering away being a newbie enthusiasm that the techs tease him about and starting to become _yeah, that’s just Ruben_ , and he’s comfortable with the familiarity of his role.

They’ve already stopped inviting him to join them for post-work drinks because he always turns them down anyway. It always happens sooner or later, so that wasn’t unexpected.

He could go home. There’s nothing urgent that needs his supervision. His mom invited him for dinner tonight but nobody could leave the lab any earlier,and theres no point driving all the way to her place now, it’s already past ten. This keeps happening, and from the way Ma sounds when she calls him, she’s started to get worried. Next week he’ll go there, if he can, because it’s been a long time and he misses them too. The timing is never right.

Ruben’s own apartment is waiting. It’s a one-bed for just him, which is nice in some ways. On days when he doesn’t wake up to someone else’s dirty dishes strewn all over the place, on nights when he doesn’t have to block out the sounds of a drunk roommate bringing someone home after all the clubs close, in the evenings when nobody talks to him about shit he doesn’t care about when he’s in the middle of something important or tells him to stop talking about shit _they_ don’t care about, it’s nice then. Easier than trying to navigate co-habitation, been there hated that.

Living by himself isn’t something that makes him happy, as such. There’s a lot of silence. There’s a lot of empty space. It’s just he _really_ doesn’t like living with people. Even his family, who he loves beyond words, but he couldn’t live with them again. He was never in synch with their rhythms and they weren’t with his, which love alone can’t do anything to change. At least on his own he can have his space how he wants it. And it _is_ how he wants it, or the closest he can get, unless he finds someone he actually likes to share it with him.

Chances of _that_ ever happening when he never really gets to know people are — eh. Best not do the calculations. It’s his own fault, really, but what can he do? It’s no less lonely to spend time with people that aren’t on the same wavelength as him, and it’s definitely far more stressful, and Ruben’s just tired of trying at the moment. Maybe one day. Maybe there’s someone at the hospital that he’ll bump into who’ll get him without him having to change who he is. Hope springs eternal, or whatever.

In the meantime, plenty of other things to keep him busy. Like IMH. Here he can be alone and it’s still almost like having company, knowing that all his work is right there if he wakes up and needs something to do, knowing that there’s always someone around in a hospital at night if he wanted to seek them out. It’s reassuring to have the option, even though he’ll never take it.

At home there’s…

Ruben folds his arms again, and lets his head drop back down onto them. Sleeping here is fine. He’s not missing out on anything.

***

**October, 2017.**

“That doesn’t look comfortable.”

“Hm?” Ruben says, and his chin slips off where he was resting it on his hand, definitely not napping. He catches himself before he faceplants into the desk. “No, it isn’t.”

He stretches his arms high over his head. Over at her own desk Abigail winces at the series of cracking sounds his spine makes, and shakes her head as she puts her jacket on. “You should really—“ she begins, but she’s interrupted by Ruben’s phone ringing.

He holds up a finger apologetically - _sorry, gotta take this_ \- and picks up the call. “Hey, Vanessa.”

“Hey, babe,” says Vanessa.“We’re coming to your place tonight. I’m making food.”

“I was gonna stay here and get some work done.”

“Usnavi says you’ve not gotta have your marking finished till Friday.”

“Well, Usnavi’s a fucking tattletale, isn't he?” he says. “Thanks for the offer, but—“

“I think you have misunderstood,” says Vanessa, in a deadly voice. “We are coming to your place tonight. I am making food. You don’t have to be there when it happens but it’s happening. Your response?”

Vanessa’s tough-girl thing doesn’t fool him for a second: if he said _I need to be alone tonight_ or _don’t go in my apartment when I’m not there_ even _no, I’m definitely staying at work_ she’d back down instantly.

“I’ll…be home in an hour?” he says, in an exaggeratedly timid voice.

“Good answer. Don’t fall asleep on the train, I'm not coming to find you if you get lost.”

“You gave in easily,” says Abigail, once Ruben’s disconnected the call. She gives him a searching look.

“Yeah, I’m a pushover,” Ruben says, and that’s all. He grins when she sighs angrily: he never responds to her attempts to find out more about who he’s dating, and Abigail is very vocal about how frustrating it is. Nobody’s quite figured out Ruben’s relationship status yet and the fact that he doesn’t bother to hide names or pronouns means that there’s a lot of gossip amongst those who haven’t heard that polyamory exists yet. _Wait, is he dating two people? Is he into guys, or girls, or both? What’s his deal?_

Ruben’s deal is a royal flush of a winning hand, so it’s not like he’s ashamed of it. Probably he’ll clarify things some day, but for the moment he's enjoying that he’s got a mystery that isn’t depressing as hell. Gossip is a given in any group of coworkers. There’s worse things from Ruben’s life they could be talking about.

“I suppose I can’t blame you,” Abigail is saying. Ruben raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Your face, whenever you’re on the phone to your…whoever. I’d be easily persuaded by someone who could make me smile like that, too.”

Yeah.

Ruben could stay here, and maybe should: there’s always more things to do than time in the day, even if there’s nothing especially urgent that needs his attention here. But at home, there’s Vanessa and Usnavi.

“Wait up, I’ll walk with you to the station,” he says, swinging his bag over his shoulder. He leaves his work on the desk behind him.

***

**December, 2003.**

Ruben comes home from college late to tiptoe to his room without waking up his mom or his sisters. Every footstep or creak is thunderclap loud in the night.

**September, 2009.**

Ruben comes home after an all-nighter at the library and there’s clearly been a pre-club drinking session here from all the empty cups and half-full bottles, but his roommate is apparently not coming back tonight: his bedroom door is open, and the apartment is dark and silent.

**December, 2010.**

Ruben comes home from the lab, and thinks about Dr Cole who so far hasn’t blinked twice inhis direction about anything other than this supposed insomnia cure he’s enlisting Ruben’s help with. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised: the guy radiates oblivious heterosexuality, it’s a waste of time to even think about. It’s just someone wants _him_ , Ruben, specifically, and that’s a good feeling. Only for his knowledge, yeah, but it’s probably the best he can hope for.

**February, 2016.**

Ruben comes home from the club with cuts all over his face from a broken window, with his jaw aching from grinding his teeth, and with a borrowed energy racing through his veins that’s going to keep him awake all night even though everything else inside him is screaming his exhaustion.

**March, 2016.**

Ruben comes back to his shabby little hotel room after his shift, smelling of cleaning products and sweat, his cuts stinging sharply, and he wonders if he’ll ever call anywhere home again.

**October, 2017.**

Ruben comes home from work, even the brisk fall chill of the air walking back from the station not enough to revive him, and collapses on the sofa. The sofa says _hey_ _what the fuck._

“Oh, hey, Usnavi,” says Ruben, blinking down sleepily at Usnavi underneath him. He rearranges but doesn’t get up. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m all for cute boys throwing themselves at me, but not like this,” says Usnavi, winded. “ _Ay_ , it’s a curse being this hot.”

“I bet,” says Ruben, working his cold hands inside Usnavi’s shirt to fully appreciate his hotness on the more literal level. Usnavi goes _aaaagh_ and tries to wriggle away, but it’s futile.

“You’re the worst,” he grumbles. “How was work, Dr Freeze?”

“Eternal,” says Ruben, yawning. “When did days get so long?”

“Breaking news, dude in his thirties gets tireder than he did as a kid,” yells Vanessa from the kitchen. “I told you you’dbe dead on your feet.”

“Fucking excuse you,” Ruben objects, scowling at her as she comes to the living room to smirk at him. “I am not in my thirties. And I am _not_ tired.”

“Sure you ain’t,” says Vanessa. “That means you can stop bothering Usnavi and come help me with dinner, then.”

Nothing sounds less appealing than standing up again right now. Ruben squirms around to flip his position, burrowing underneath Usnavi.

“I can’t,” he says. “Usnavi’s on top of me. I’m trapped.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Usnavi says, pushing up. Ruben wraps his legs around Usnavi’s back and digs in his heels so Usnavi falls back down again. “Oof. You know, sometimes I feel like I’m just a glorified blanket to you."

“Ssh,” says Ruben. “Blankets don’t talk.”

Vanessa manages to work herself into the tiny fraction of space left on the sofa, tucking her feet underneath Ruben’s legs and her hair falling all over Ruben’s shoulder. He closes his eyes as she plays her fingers idly across his cheek and then his mouth. She tastes like adobo seasoning.

“Dinner ready?” he asks, and it comes out slurred and drowsy.

Vanessa checks the time on Usnavi’s watch. “Not for another hour. You’ve got some time to sleep.”

“Not sleeping,” he insists. “Just…appreciating.”

“Uh-huh. Appreciating what, the inside of your eyelids?” she asks, and she’s laughing at him.

Lots of things, actually, he wants to say: the taste of spices on his lips, the scratch of Usnavi’s stubble as he nuzzles his face into Ruben’s neck, the sound of Vanessa breathing quietly by his ear and the smell of whatever dinner she’s cooking slowly filling the apartment. 

That’s a lot more words than he has energy to shape them right now.

“Being home,” he says instead, and anything else he might have added gets lost in Vanessa’s mouth pressed against his and Usnavi’s against his shoulder, and in the contented reverie unfocus between sleeping and being awake.

 


	16. medio año

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: its 90-verses sixmonthiversary today! can you believe these three idiots have been ruining my life for half a year? proper update going up tomorrow or thursday, but to celebrate here’s some bonus footage: a bunch of scenes/fragments I never made into actual things but liked too much to just get rid of.]

**Pre-relationship, mid-crush: May-June 2017.**

“VANESSA!” Usnavi hollers. “VAA. NEES. SAAAAA.”  
  
“WHAT,” she yells back, even though she’s walking into the living room already and doesn’t really need to.  
  
“Ruben texted me _first_! _He_ texted _me_! And he asked if I wanted to hang out tonight! That’s never happened before, I always have to ask him!”

“Aite, chill the fuck out,” she says, but she can’t help smiling fondly at him. It’s cute how excited he is.

“I will _not_ chill the fuck out,” Usnavi says, and then realization dawns that they already had plans. “Oh, wait, shit. Uh. What’s a way to say _I can’t do tonight_ that also strongly implies I would like him to ask again as soon as humanly possible and also that I think his face is good, but like, not in a way that means I’d _do_ anything about it but just because he should know his face is good in case he doesn’t know it already?”

Vanessa thinks about it.

“Dick pic?” she suggests. Usnavi looks deeply unimpressed. 

*******

“I’m not third wheeling, am I? You should tell me if you wanna just have couple time, I’m not always so great at knowing when I’ve outstayed my welcome,” says Ruben.

“Ruben,” says Vanessa. “We’re in _your_ apartment.”

***

“Vanessa, you know I cherish and adore you, you’re my girl, my lady, mi corazón _,_ ” Usnavi says, “I respect your body both because it is your right as a woman and human to have your body respected, and also because _daaamn, giiirl —_ “

He’s such an idiot. She loves him so much.

***

**Established relationship. July-November 2017.**

Usnavi comes back upstairs where Ruben and Vanessa are still in his bed, reaches into the pocket of his pajama pants and says "got a present for you while I was down there, Ruben!’

He tosses something to Ruben, who does not even nearly catch it. He scrambles around in the sheets and finally locates it: one of the cheap blue toothbrushes Usnavi sells in the store, the same as the one Ruben uses at his own apartment but new.

“You can keep it here!” Usnavi says happily. “Vanessa’s got one here too. Much easier than having to remember to bring your own, and since you got all weird about the sharing…”

“It’s unhygienic,” Ruben tries to argue, but his voice is too wavery to give it much weight. “This is…are you _sure_?”

“Yeah, Usnavi, are you _sure_ you can spare the extra room in the toothbrush cup? It’s a big sacrifice,” says Vanessa. “Think of all the other things you could do with all that space. Hey, why does Ruben get a present and not me?”

“He’s less demanding,” says Usnavi, but relents immediately and reaches into his other pocket, pulling out a fun size bag of M&Ms. He tosses them towards her, missing completely and hitting Ruben in the side of the head.

“Hey,” Ruben objects.

“You’re an angel,” says Vanessa, opening the packet and tipping half of them into her mouth at once.

“For breakfast?’’ Ruben says, mock-disapproving. “One way ticket to cavity station for Vanessa.”

“Don’t worry, mom, I’ll clean my teeth after,” she says, muffled by candy. “I’m gonna use this one, though.” She waves the brush at him.

“You can’t, it’s _mine_ ,” Ruben says, and tries not to sound like he’s about to fucking cry about it or something.

***

Usnavi raises one eyebrow coolly, and gives the smuggest, slowest shrug Ruben has ever seen.

“It’s like an inch and a half difference at _most_ ,” Ruben says under his breath. “And I know you aren’t complaining.”

“Whatever you say, _little dude_ ,” Usnavi says, hefting the box back into his arms and disappearing into the next aisle .

“I have a perfectly normal sized penis,” Ruben calls after him, then freezes when he remembers they aren’t in Usnavi’s apartment right now.  


“Get out of my store,” says Sonny, from the counter.

***

Vanessa should really be used to this kind of thing by now, and yet when she gets back to the hotel room she still pauses to blink in mild surprise. Only mild. She has known Usnavi for a very long time, after all.

“You’re stuck in a window,” she observes.

“Maybe _you’re_ stuck in a window,” Usnavi shoots back. “Why am I always the one bein' put on blast?”

“Why are you always the one stuck in things? How does this happen more than once to a person?!”

“It was easier to get out than in.”

“That doesn’t explain why you went out there in the first place.”

“There’s a roof platformy thing,” Usnavi says, impatient like she’s the one being ridiculous here. “I wanted to stand on it and, y’know, just see what was out there.”

“ _Outside_ is out there!” Vanessa says, exasperated. “Go stand on the sidewalk and look at it like a normal person!"

“Well, I would if I could, but right now I can’t, because I am _stuck_ in a _window_ and you aren't _helping me_!”

Vanessa can see the problem: it’s not that Usnavi’s not small enough to fit through the gap, it’s that he’s too short to reach it properly. He’s got his head, one arm and one leg partially inside, his other leg trying to give him enough leverage off the outside sill to jump back in through the open top part of the window but not quite managing it.

She sighs. ”I'm calling Ruben.“

"Oh god,” says Usnavi, despairingly. “Do you need his giant science brain to figure out how to get me down?"

"Nah," she says. "I just think he'd find it funny."

Ruben answers the call after three rings and frowns up at her from her screen. He must be working: he’s got a pen stuck behind either ear and another one in his hand, because he always forgets he already has one. “Why are you Facetiming me?”

Vanessa turns the phone around. There’s an explosion of laughter from the handset.

"Ruben," Usnavi shouts. "Vanessa's not helping me! I want to get inside! Ruben stop _laughing_!”

Vanessa comes over and prods at the knee he’s managed to get up high enough to hook over the windowframe. “I didn’t know you were that flexible,” she says.

“I’m _not_ ,” Usnavi says, through gritted teeth.

***

Ruben’s heart is going faster than sound. “Wait, is this a Thing for us?” he asks.

“Uh,” says Usnavi. “I didn’t think it was while we were doing it, but on the other hand the dick don’t lie and I definitely have more than a semi right now, so…”

“I know there’s a lot of wordplay in our foreplay but I didn’t think the wordplay _was_ the foreplay,” says Ruben, baffled.

They do this all the time. He’s not in general a words guy but this is something he is good at: puns and one-liners, an always-escalating back-and-forth. Usnavi’s just so much fun to get into it with, gives back even better than he gets, and Ruben likes the sharp little pull at the left corner of Usnavi’s mouth when he knows he’s landed a verbal hit, likes the way that both of them do their best to hide when the other one makes them laugh because that would mean losing the game. Ruben likes the way Usnavi leans in closer and closer the more intense the conversation turns so they’re almost speaking the words against each others lips, the way Usnavi’s hands slide across his hips just underneath his sweater and oh, shit, it really is a Thing for them.

They do this in public. They’re at a _party_. He didn’t _know_.

“I feel like there’s something I could do with that wordplay-foreplay suffix but it feels inappropriate now,” says Usnavi. He moves backwards out of Ruben’s space and shifts his weight, uncomfortable.“Man, I really wish I wasn’t wearing such tight pants. I hope it’s not too obvious.”

Ruben looks.

Mistake.

He looks back up again.

“It’s…kind of obvious,” he says, weakly.

“Dammit,” says Usnavi. “Okay, fun new game, let’s have a round of _Leave The Party Without Anyone Noticing Usnavi’s Boner._ All to play for, folks, the stakes don’t get higher than this.”

“I mean,” says Ruben. “We could _both_ have tightpants boners. That would be higher stakes. Who would hide behind who?”

“I guess we’d just flip a coin for it. Or get creative, can we both hide behind each other? No, what, that’s impossible. Maybe if you kind of —no!” Usnavi cuts himself off, shaking his head. “No, we’re not starting another thing, I’m in a crisis. Do something! But like, subtly.”

Uh.

“WELL, we have to leave!” Ruben announces to the room, his voice far louder than he expected it to be. “It’s been great, time to go, bye, thanks for having us!”

“Fucking fantastic,” hisses Usnavi, trying to casually step out of sight behind Ruben.“ _So_ lowkey.”

“Is everything okay?” Dani asks, suspiciously.

“Nothing!” says Usnavi, frantically. “Wait, that’s not—um, I mean, yes?”

“EVERYTHING’S GREAT,” Ruben says. “TOTALLY FINE AND AWESOME.”

***

“His name is Usnavi,” Vanessa says. “Probably wearing a hat. Looks kinda like Ruben but twink. Have you seen him around?”

***

 **usnavi:  
** **-** yo this is a bop right  
\- THIS  
\- is a BOP

 **ruben:  
** \- none of us are in the apartment with you

 **usnavi:  
** \- sssssh i love it  
\- ¡escuchad!  
\- DAMN do you HEAR that 

**ruben:  
** \- literally no

 **vanessa:  
** \- what song

 **usnavi:  
** \- bdiiing  bdiiing bdrrrng bdiiing  
\- bpff tk tk tk tk bp 

 **ruben:  
** \- very helpful

 **vanessa:  
** \- no he’s right that’s a bop  
\- bp bududududu

**usnavi:  
** \- ¡¡sí!!

***

"I bought this great Colombian medium-roast the other day,” Ruben says into Usnavi’s ear. “You would've loved it. Sort of almondy. Almost sweet, even without sugar.”

"...Tell me more,” says Usnavi. “Pour-over?”

“French press. Not the fanciest, but it gets the right results if you know how to use it,” Ruben says. “And I _know_ how to use it.”

“Mmm, _yeah_ , you do,” Usnavi says. “Did you use a manual grinder?"

"You know I did."

" _God_ , you're so hot.”

“Why is this my type?” Vanessa asks nobody in particular.

***

Usually in the mornings Usnavi has more than enough energy for all three of them, even when he’s underslept.

On the rare occasions he does really stretch himself way past his limits, though, it’s like Vanessa has to deal with a mirror version of morning-Vanessa, and she resents this beyond words. Nobody wants to be confronted with that kind of harsh reality about themselves so early in the day. Especially not when said harsh reality is preventing her from toast because he’s too stubborn to admit he can’t open the damn jar of peanut butter.

“I can do it by myself!”

“Dios mío, Usnavi, just let me—“

“No!”

“Yes!” Vanessa finally manages to pull the jar out of Usnavi’s reluctant hands and twists the lid. “God, you’re so difficult when you’re tired. If you just—oh, wow, this is really on there. Ow.”

She wraps the bottom of her shirt around her hand and tries again. “Damn!”

“ _See_? Look, give it back—“

“No! I’m fine! I got this!”

“Van _es_ sa—!“ He grabs at her hands. It could probably go on indefinitely except that Ruben, with pointedly heavy footsteps, storms into the kitchen, grabs the jar away from both of them, and opens it in one easy movement.

He sets the jar down on the counter with a loud thunk, raises his eyebrows as high as they’ll go, and stomps back out without saying a word.

Usnavi and Vanessa look at each other, then at the jar, and then at each other again, suddenly awkward.

“…Well, we’d already loosened it,” Vanessa mutters.

"I _know_ , right?" says Usnavi, sticking his knife into the jar and licking the peanut butter directly off it. “Way to take all the credit.”

***

Usnavi folds his bare arms across his bare chest and shivers unhappily. “I’m cold,” he complains.

“It’s fall and you’re basically naked,” Ruben says."There's an easy solution to that.”

"is it cuddling for warmth?" Usnavi asks hopefully

"No, it's this amazing new invention called pants.”

“Pfft. Never heard of them," Usnavi says, climbing into Ruben’s lap.

***

“Hey,” Vanessa purrs, pressing herself against Usnavi’s back and resting her chin on his shoulder. He nuzzles his cheek into her a little, but his eyes stay focused on his own hand turning the crank on the coffee grinder.“You ever thought it’d save time to just like, grind the whole packet at once?”  
  
Usnavi yelps and ducks away, almost dropping the grinder. “Why would you _say_ that to me, Vanessa? It’s got to be fresh, I’ve told you that.”

“Why don’t you just put twice as much in so you only have to brew it for half as long?” she says, jumping up onto the counter to watch him make the coffee.

“No! I’m not—why—what the fuck are you talking about‽” Usnavi says. “I _hate_ this. Is this because I ate your Oreos? I was snacky, querida, and you don’t live over a bodega, it was desperate times!”

Vanessa shrugs. Usnavi kneels down with the sealed-up bag of beans to put them back in her freezer.

“Why bother putting them in there?” she says, prodding him with her toes. “You’re only gonna warm them up again when you use them, just leave ‘em on out the side.”

Usnavi clutches his chest, looking pained.

“Open. In direct sunlight,” she adds, and he makes a quiet, distressed noise.

She waits for long enough that his shoulders start to relax and finishes with, “it tastes the same as instant anyway.”

Usnavi leaves the room at a run.

***

 **Ruben:  
** \- you having fun working from home again?  
\- slacker

 **Vanessa:  
** \- im bored as hell tbh  
\- why isn’t the day over yet so you can come see me  
\- i miss my boys

 **Ruben:  
** \- that’s suspiciously sweet  
\- what’s your game?

"Dr Marcado?" comes a voice, with a cheerful little knock at the door. Ruben spins in his chair with a smile to face Cassie, one of his first-year students.

“Yes! Of course, come in, take a seat,” Ruben says. “You wanted to talk to me about—“

His phone buzzes again. “Oh, sorry, just let me turn that off,” he mutters, but he catches sight of Vanessa’s reply and can’t help but sigh heavily.

“Something wrong?” Cassie asks.

“No, no,” he says. “It’s just my partner. She _knows_ I don’t know what the emoji things mean, so she always sends them and then laughs and tells me I’m old when I ask her to translate.”

Cassie covers her own giggle with a cough.

“See?” Ruben laments. “You’re doing it too. Respect your elders.”

He’s only four years older than her. It feels odd, sometimes, the mixture of ages at community college, it’s strange to be teaching people so close to his own age in this kind of setting. The division isn’t as clear it is with his straight-from-high school students, butit’s also not the same kind of relationship he had with the people who worked under him at IMH.But he muddles through well enough: he’s still technically an authority here, he isn’t going to develop actual friendships with his students, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be friendly. They mostly seem to appreciate it, which is gratifying, even if it does end up meaning they’re comfortable enough to collectively sass him something terrible.

“Aw. Are you okay, do you need a young person to interpret for you?” Cassie says, grinning.

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” Ruben admonishes. “It’s just a _nonsense_ language. Some of it I can figure out. The little dancing lady is her. And the little science man is me.”  
  
“That makes sense,” she agrees.

“But I mean, what is this supposed to mean‽ Science dude, dancing girl, coffee cup. Then…what, is this an eggplant? The purple thing?”

“Um,” says Cassie.

“It _is_ ,” he says. “It’s an eggplant, then another eggplant, then…rain? And then a thumbs up.”

“I…don’t think I know that one,” says Cassie, slowly. “Uh.”

“Is...is she having something with eggplant in it for lunch, I don’t…?”

“Must be that, yeah, definitely.” Cassie stands hurriedly. “Well, sorry I couldn’t help, but wow, I really have to go, I’m gonna be—“ she motions indistinctly with one hand.

“I thought we were going to talk about your pre-lab?”

“Maybe later! I forgot about the thing!” she calls, already halfway out the door. “Have a day, I guess, Dr Marcado, bye, thanks, see you!”

Ruben watches her leave, bemused.

***

Vanessa hears a disappointed “aw, _coffee_ , no” just as she pushes the kitchen door open. She raises an eyebrow when she spots Usnavi, standing there with the lower hem of his tank top pulled right up so his slim hips and his belly are all on show. He’s frozen with wide eyes like if he doesn’t move she might not see what he’s doing.

“Usnavi,” Vanessa says. “Are you sucking spilled coffee out of your shirt?”

“Nmph,” Usnavi denies. The shirt drops out of his mouth. “No?”

***

“Have I ever told you how much I love it when you get lattes when we’re out?” says Usnavi as he grabs the tray of drinks. “You hear that, whatever this place is called? Only the De la Vega bodega meets the Ruben standard for black coffee! Ha _haaa_ , assholes. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you,” he adds to the barista.

“The only person in all of New York city I trust to get it right,” Ruben agrees as they get a table. Usnavi stops calling apologies back to the barista and grins proudly at him.

“Yeah, buddy! ¡No pare sig—wait. Why only the city?”  
  
“Well, I had a place back—“ Ruben can see Vanessa making frantic _no stop_ movements but it’s too late. “Um. Back in Philadelphia.”  
  
“What.” Usnavi looks blankly shocked. Oops.

“Uh-oh,” says Vanessa to herself.

“A _place_? Who?” Usnavi says, sounding faint.

“You won’t know them,” Ruben says, evasively. “It was a long time ago, Usnavi, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I thought it would’ve been obvious.”

"All this time," Usnavi says numbly. "All this time and you had someone else.”

"It's not like I was going behind your back," Ruben tries. "I lived there first, I knew them first.”

Usnavi puts his head in his hands and wails "you mean _I'm_ the one you're cheating with?! _I’m your coffee mistress?!”_

“ _How come you guys broke up?_ Well, it all started—” Vanessa murmurs, stirring sugar into her drink.

“Usnavi, you’re making a scene,” Ruben says. “People are looking.”

“GOOD,” Usnavi says, top volume. “LET THEM LOOK. THIS IS IT, FOLKS, THIS IS THE FACE OF BETRAYAL.”

He waves his arms expansively at Ruben, nearly knocking Vanessa’s mug over. Vanessa places a steadying hand over it then picks up it up, blowing delicately across the top of her drink to cool it. Her head moves from Usnavi to Ruben as she watches the conversation bounce back and forth with a serene expression.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m sorry I drank coffee before I came to New York!”

“Were there others too? How many‽”

“That was the only one! Everywhere else sucked, I swear!” Ruben pleads. “Please, Usnavi, you _know_ I love your coffee. It’s my favorite. I barely even knew what coffee _was_ before I knew you, you were a revelation, it’s at least eighty percent of why I even like you as a person.”

Usnavi eyes Ruben closely as if trying to gauge his honesty, then sits back in his chair.

“…Okay,” he says, taking his hat off to run a hand through his hair and setting it back on with a little shake of his head. “Okay. Thank you. I’m sorry for getting so drama. You’re an adult and I respect your lifestyle choices. So someone made your drink right before me, that’s fine, it’s fiiine! It was just one little coffee place.”

“Yes, exactly. Just one. Well, and my mom too, of course,” Ruben says, without thinking.

Usnavi’s face goes thunderous.

***

**Post- _eyes to the wind._** **December 2017 - January 2018.**

“Absolutely not.”

"Look, it's only fair," says Usnavi. "I'm all troubled and brooding right now, and Ruben’s on that like, scary-sweet _I’ll destroy anyone who wrongs you_ thing that you usually do, which means you have to be the happy optimistic one! Keep the balance! Face the day with a sunshiney mind and a big ol’ smile!”

Vanessa smiles at him. It is decidedly _not_ sunshiney. Usnavi cowers.

"Okay, okay, fine," he relents. "You don't have to be new Usnavi, just...please stop doing that. I'll be the happy one again.”

“You’re damn right you will,” she says, darkly.

***

“I just think you could at least wait until after breakfast,” Vanessa complains, as Usnavi turns the light out and makes an unnecessarily gymnastic attempt to clamber over her so he can sleep in the middle. “I get the, y’know, lotsa big feelings thing, but I keep walking in to find you having some kind of cathartic emotional self-discovery before I’ve even made toast and it’s too early, Usnavi, it was still dark out!”

“That’s just good organisation,” Usnavi argues. “It’s _productivity_. Getting it done first thing so I can get on with the rest of my day."

"You spent the rest of the day taking sadness naps."

"Yeah, but I got a really early start on them. At least I’m not like Ruben doin' the crisis thing in the middle of the night.”

"If your argument is that getting it out of the way first thing is better, then it would follow that me having a crisis at one AM is even more efficient than you doing it at six AM," Ruben reasons, from Usnavi’s other side. “That’s five hours earlier. And then there's time for more sleep and you can still wake up at normal human hours."

“Y’all are wrecks,” Vanessa grumbles. “Well, if Ruben has nighttime and Usnavi has mornings, I'm gonna start calling you all on my lunchbreak to have a breakdown just so we can really stretch it out through the day.”

True to her word, Vanessa group-calls them the next day on lunch.

“Breakdown time?” Ruben asks lightly.

“They didn’t have the bagel I wanted at the deli," she says. "Comfort me."

"Aw, babe,” Ruben says, sympathetic. 

"Querida, that's awful, do you need me to come pick you up from work?" Usnavi asks.

“No,” she says with a heavy sigh. “I’ll get through it. I just…need to be alone for a while, I think.”

“You called us,” Ruben points out.

“I NEED. To be ALONE,” she repeats, and hangs up on them.

“Oh man,” says Usnavi, sounding worried. “I hope she’ll be okay.”

***

“I made a list of what I need to do next,” Usnavi announces proudly. “Well. Okay, actually I wrote two things and the first one was _make a list of next steps_. Number two was _find out how do people get jobs, question mark_. Then I started crying, but then I wrote _stop crying_ on there because it’s gotta be at least three things to count as a list, and once that happened I could check two things off already and call it a success, so all in all I am _nailing_ recovery.”

***

“Wow, so when you said you were doing a Star Wars marathon yesterday, you meant literally the whole thing,” says Ruben, watching the little orange robot roll across the screen. “That’s like eighteen hours.”

"Did you sleep at all, babe?" Vanessa asks, concerned.

"I've never had enough free time to watch all of them in a row before!" Usnavi says, bouncing in his seat a little. His grin is kind of tired-manic, but he looks so thrilled about it, and also looks ridiculously young in his pajamas and an oversized Ruben-sweater with his hair all sticky-up, surrounded by empty candy wrappers, so Vanessa’s not gonna be the one to tell him that staying up all night is unhealthy. Usnavi deserves a chance to embrace the midpoint between teenager and adult that he never got to properly explore, with all the stupid decisions and junk food that comes along with it.

Ruben’s face has glazed over a little staring at the TV. He shoves Usnavi’s legs out of the way so he can take a seat too.

“Fair enough,” she says, and squishes herself in between them. “Hey, you feel like total shit yet, Usnavi?”

“I’m definitely gonna either pass out or throw up!” Usnavi says, with apparently genuine delight. “But I’m waiting till after the movie. I don’t wanna miss anything.”  
  
“ _Ssssh_ ,” says Ruben. “I’m trying to _watch_.”

***

“I don’t know what to put.”

“You’re really overthinking it,” says Vanessa, “just write whatever.”

She doesn’t look up at Ruben, focusing hard on her own pen moving slowly and deliberately over Usnavi’s arm.

“Okay,” says Ruben uncertainly. He kneels up off the floor, places his hand lightly on Usnavi’s other arm to hold it flat against the couch cushions.

Usnavi makes a soft _mmrfl_ noise. His fingers spasm upwards, hanging tense in the air for half a second before they relax again, and he shifts his hips a little. Even when he’s sleeping he never stays very still.

Ruben watches, nods to himself, carefully writes across the inside of Usnavi’s wrist.

“There,” he says, pleased. “All done.”

“Me too,” says Vanessa. She leans across Usnavi’s chest with her head tilted to see what Ruben’s put. Usnavi frowns as her hair tickles his bare skin, but he doesn’t wake up.

“ _You’re really cute, heart smiley face heart_ ,” she reads. “Aw, _babe_. That’s adorable.”

Ruben smiles, and takes a look over at Vanessa’s handiwork.

“It’s dicks,” he says.

“Sure is,” Vanessa confirms.

Above their heads, Usnavi snores gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: its all just dick jokes and coffee here folks thats all i really am. thanks for the six months. its been rad. shoutout to a-classic-fool and tomorrowsrain and curiouswildflower for being another awesome trio and making my life a constant screaming mess of UVR nonsense, i love it]


	17. encender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: just a dumb high fic by your local dumb high author. set maybe two months into the relationship, after say what your soul sings, but before all the i love yous, i'll figure out the exact date when i can be bothered to look at a calendar.]

Weekend hype isn’t something Usnavi gets. Sure, he loves the _idea_ of dancing on a Saturday night, he’s glad he does it more often since he’s been with Vanessa, but he works seven days most weeks, he’s tired, he rarely has Sundays off. There’s only so much moving around a pair of legs can handle in a day.

Ruben seems to be terminally incapable of grasping the fact that Usnavi was the opposite of party long before he showed up.

“You really don’t have to stay home just because I am,”he says when he and Vanessa drop by during Usnavi's lunch break. “You guys can go out, I’ll just hang out at my place, I’m used to spending weekends alone. Or, uh, phrase that in a way that doesn’t sound so passive-aggressive, but you get what I mean.”

“Buddy, I’m gonna be on my feet more than ten hours today, you think I’m staying home just for you?” Usnavi says. 

“Well, we should do something fun, then,” Ruben insists. “Like…uh. Um. What do people do for fun?”

“We could…” Vanessa starts, then frowns. “Uh. Usnavi?”

Usnavi’s starting to suspect this conversation will end up a trend in this relationship. It’s actually been real nice having someone around who doesn’t go out either, makes it less lonely on weekends when Vanessa wants to hit the town, and makes Vanessa feel less guilty about enjoying herself without him. But obviously Usnavi likes it best when all three of them are together doing something fun, and sometimes it’s hard to find ways to let loose that work around all of their combined issues. Having a drunk night together the other week was super fun but Vanessa doesn’t like drinking at home too often, Ruben doesn’t like going out ever, Usnavi’s always tired, though for the right night he can put that tiredness aside. He likes a bit of everything but he likes one thing best and they haven’t done that together yet. And honestly, he could kinda use it, just the break he needs to come back at things fresh agan.

“Pot’s good,” he says, hopefully. “We could pot.”

“Ooh,” Vanessa says. “We _could_ pot. Ruben?”

“I’m not against that,” Ruben says. “As long as you’re not asking me to pick up, I was never very good at it. I just sound…wrong.”

“I can’t really imagine you buying drugs,” Usnavi says. “I feel like you shouldn’t even know what they are, didn’t you grow up in a nice neighborhood?”

“I’m a _chemist._ And I went to college.”

“Hey, Ruben, pretend I’m a dealer and you’re buying off me,” Vanessa suggests.

Ruben straightens his tie, drops his voice an octave for some reason and says, “Hey, can I get some weed, please?”

“Oh, man, you’re right. What _is_ that?”

“It’s my weed voice. It’s not a choice, I just don’t know how to not do it.”

“Point made,” Usnavi says. “That’s fine, you don’t know any dealers round here anyway.”

“I’m not sure we do either, y’know,” Vanessa says. “Remember how hard it was to pick up last time? Everyone’s more cautious these days. Maybe we’re all just gettin’ too old for it.”

“Ugh, don’t say that,” Ruben complains. “You’re not even twenty-five yet.”

“I’m mature beyond my years,” Vanessa says. “Pete will definitely be able to hook us up.”

“There is no way in hell I’m asking Graffiti Pete to buy weed for us,” Usnavi says.

***

The first thing he says when he answers the door to Graffiti Pete is “please don’t tell Sonny about this.”

“I ain’t no snitch,” Pete says. “Let me in, dude, this looks suspicious as fuck," w hich is how, despite swearing on all he owns that something like this would never happen, Usnavi ends up with Pete standing around awkwardly inside his apartment. 

Ah, but he’s not fooling anyone any more. After the mural and finding out he had Sonny’s back during the blackout it’s been harder to genuinely dislike Pete like he used to and Usnavi mostly just does it out of habit now. Especially since Pete's moved on from shady business deals and ruining Usnavi’s wall to being almost-legit with an apprenticeship in a tattoo studio.Sonny’s fully and irritatingly aware that Usnavi’s softened on him, slim chance of that information not being passed along, so no matter how hard Usnavi tries to threaten him it never seems to stick these days. Might as well try to be nice this time.

“Sooo,” Usnavi says. “Given anyone good ink recently?”

“Mostly they still only let me practice on oranges. Got a couple on me though. Rule one, ain’t nobody gonna go to an artist who don’t even trust his own work.” Pete rolls his sleeve up. “Check it, this one’s from last week.”

“Awesome,” Usnavi says. “Why a cat?”

“It’s a scorpion.”

“Oh.”

“It’s harder than spraypaint, okay?”

“No, no, I see it now. It’s very cool. Scorpion. Nice.” 

“I’ll give you half off if you wanna be my first human subject.”

“Hard pass.” Usnavi thinks about it for a minute. “And if I find out Sonny’s come home with so much as a _dot_ tattooed on him then I’m coming for you, you hear me?”

“I already asked. He said maybe after I practice a couple more years.”

Well, thank god there’s a limit to Sonny’s loyalty. And now Usnavi’s run out of smalltalk and sort of just wants Pete to leave, so, “…you got the stuff, yeah?”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Pete reaches into his pocket and tosses over a small baggie. Usnavi hands him a twenty. “This is a one-off though, bro, I don’t wanna get mixed up playin’ middle man full time. You want it again, I can give you numbers so you can call yourself, I got my future to think of.”

“Sure thing. I appreciate it,” Usnavi says, then “you wanna toke?” because it’s only polite to offer.

“Nah,” says Pete. “I ain’t touch that stuff, not even cigarettes. My body is a temple. You know you should really respect yourself more than this, man.”

“Alright, that’s enough, beat it,” Usnavi says.

***

Usnavi sits crosslegged on his bed. Vanessa’s sprawled next to him and Ruben’s looking for pants he can borrow because he says “getting high in jeans is counterproductive” like it’s any more normal to be high wearing sweatpants with a shirt and tie, but they’re both just background noise right now anyway because Usnavi’s gotta concentrate. He lays the materials out on the back of a book in front of him like an artist setting up his brushes. The ritual is as important as the high.

Nobody in the world would ever describe Usnavi as particularly dextrous, least of all Usnavi himself. That just means there’s a _real_ deep satisfaction when his hands actually do what he wants them to. It only comes out for specific occasions: pouring coffee, massages, certain other kinds of physical interaction _if_ you get what he’s saying, playing guitar, this. Usnavi’s fingers were made for feelgood times, not business - who needs to write properly, anyway? What he got is so much better. 

He’s smoked in a ton of places with various people and had some good times - with Benny in the park or up different fire escapes, at Vanessa’s place, but his favorite memories are always the nights at his place no matter who’s there. Vanessa calls him territorial about it and maybe he is: being the one who takes the lead makes it feel like he’s played an  essential role in all the happiness that happens later, and that's a good sensation. His bedroom, his perfectly-cultivated blaze it playlist (chill but not sleepy, interesting enough to space out and listen to if you want without being so interesting it stops conversation. It’s an art form in itself and nobody does it quite as well as Usnavi, if it’s not too cocky to say that about himself), his perfectly-rolled joints.

Usually he’d smoke blunts, but it’s been a while for all of them and he’s gonna assume Ruben’s tolerance is probably somewhere at the same level as Vanessa’s always is, i.e. non-existent. So he cuts with tobacco for today, but that’s okay, joints have a pleasure of their own, especially when they’re as beautiful as this: thin and tidy with those watermelon flavor papers which Benny always scoffs at but Usnavi and Vanessa both love, a little for the taste but mostly for the fact they’re a vibrant red-pink with watermelon seeds patterned all over. There’s times he gets jealous of Benny’s muscles and general coolness but if that’s the trade-off for being too cool for watermelon papers then Usnavi’s fine over here, because look at this shit, it’s _gorgeous_. He taps the roach end down against the book just a little more insistently than he needs to so everyone will pay attention to his creation.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Vanessa, dismissively. “We get it. You and your _very_ occasionally magic fingers.”

“Watch that tone,” Usnavi says, moving back up the bed to lie next to her. “You better keep me sweet if you want a good night, I’m the only one who can roll here.”

He points at both of them meaningfully with the joint. Ruben reaches over and takes it from him.

“Says who, show-off? I told you I used to smoke.” He puts it between his lips and clicks the lighter several times futilely. “Crap, do we have another lighter?”

“Smoked in college and you ain’t even heard of roller’s rights?” Usnavi says, plucking the joint out of Ruben’s mouth and returning it to his own. “Check out amateur hour over here, you let the expert kick things off, honey.”

He takes the lighter too, flame ignites first try, and he inhales to light, not even trying not to be smug about knowing how much they’re into his whole look right now. He’s caught Vanessa on multiple occasions watching him closely whenever he lights up, eyes fixed on his fingers and his mouth, and Ruben’s watching him now too. Usnavi takes a long, deep drag as deliberately cool as he can make it, eyes closed and mouth soft, settles back against the pillows. Then he ruins it by somehow managing to blow smoke directly in his own eye which probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him.

“Shitmotherfuck,” he says, writhing around in pain but still taking a second toke because god _damn_ , he’s missed all of this, from the burnt green taste hitting his tongue right down to the burning in his chest, suppressing one of those irritated lung-deep coughs that if he lets himself start he won’t stop for the next five minutes. Vanessa picks up on it right away.

“Been a while,” she teases. “Too much for you to handle already?”

“You wanna be careful throwin’ all those rocks in that glass house of yours,” he retorts, and explains to Ruben, “Vanessa is a total lightweight for weed. It’s God’s way of making sure she don’t get cocky about being able to outdrink me by a mile.”

Vanessa takes the joint, inhales slow and sexy, exhales straight into Usnavi’s face so that his eyes sting again. “I’m not a lightweight.”

***

Vanessa is _so_ a lightweight and it’s the cutest shit Usnavi’s ever seen. They’re barely even finished the first before her eyes go all dozy and heavy-lidded and she always rubs at them so her eye makeup gets all smudgy. It makes her look like a sleepy panda. Usnavi loves it. 

Even the vaguest suggestion that it’s affecting her makes her all defiant, because of course it does, but she’s still all relaxed and limp so its sort of like getting into an argument with a beached jellyfish, which doesn’t quite jam with his previous panda metaphor so maybe he should stop making her so many animals before it gets confusing, but his point is: _adorable_.

“You fuckin’ watch me,” she says. “I’ll roll the next one better than any you’ve thrown together in your _life_.”

“Uh-huh,” Usnavi says. “Go on, then.”

“I will!”

Usnavi usually likes to stretch the evening and the supply out as long as possible, he's about riding the wave at exactly the right point, not that _fat joints that hurt to smoke and then everyone’s passed out before sun’s even set_ kinda bullshit that he always suspects is just the stoner version of a dick-measuring contest, but he figures it’ll take so long for Vanessa to construct something smokeable that they’ll have more than made the most of their first high by the time they’re ready to kick off a second.

Upward of fifteen minutes later and Usnavi can’t entirely remember what he’s feeling triumphant over but he’s pretty sure he’s just been proven right about—something? What— oh, yeah, that was it, Vanessa still doesn’t even have all the shit she needs together, so if they’re judging just on speed Usnavi’s already won. Although in fairness that’s partly ‘cause she hasn’t noticed Ruben stealing everything in turn, slipping one thing up his sleeve then while Vanessa’s distracted searching for it, returning it to the bed beside her and taking something else in it’s place. Usnavi wonders if he was this much of a shit in college or if it’s something he’s been saving up his whole life just for Vanessa.

“Hey, what’s college stoners like, Ruben?” he asks, curious. “I bet they’re all that philosophy _what is consciousness, this is not a pipe_ kinda crap, right?”

“It’s not a pipe,” Vanessa says, pulling a rolling paper out and resting it against the packet so it sits in a wide V shape. Ruben, with a sleight of hand that nearly rivals some of Usnavi’s banned customers, slides Usnavi’s cheapass neon green grinder up his sleeve. “S’a joint. Or it would be if I could _find_ anything. Where’s the grinder? I swear I just had it.”

She starts searching for it, by which Usnavi means she slowly leans over until she’s lying in his lap then decides she needs to take a break. He walks his fingers up and down the bridge of her nose. She sticks her tongue out to try and lick his hand. Ha. Can’t reach. 

“Maybe it was like that more for the arts types, but I hung out with chemistry students,” Ruben says, setting the grinder back down while Vanessa’s not paying attention and squirrelling away the packet of rolling papers instead. “I’ll admit I’m the first to be a pretentious son of a bitch about that kind of thing but they talked a _lot_ about being wasted, which is boring after the first few times even when they’re talking about the science of it. Like, yes, everyone _knows_ what MDMA does to your brain chemistry, we’re all adults here.”

“…Sure,” Usnavi says, not willing to admit that he’s not even sure what MDMA looks like, never mind how it works on a biological level.

“So mostly I liked smoking alone. It was like taking a vacation. I didn’t often get a chance to just totally relax, you know?”

Man. Ruben’s voice sounds so fucking good right now, gravelly from the smoke and slow in a way even Usnavi at his most stoned wouldn’t be able to mimic. It sounds like…like maple syrup. Or marshmallow fluff. Or Nutella. Shit, Usnavi’s hungry.

“You suit relaxed. Oh, there it is,” says Vanessa, sitting up and spotting the grinder. She carefully drops a few buds in the top then holds it over her shoulder. “Usnavi, you do this, I can’t be bothered.”

“Pfft. Some roller,” he scoffs, taking it anyway and twisting with his palm, idly noticing Ruben wince at the sound of plastic squeaking against itself but there’s not much Usnavi can do about that. 

“I’m outsourcing the manual labor,” Vanessa says. “I’m gonna do the skilled part myself.”

“Not without papers you ain’t,” Usnavi says.

“I've already got pa—wait, where the fuck did they go? Ay, esto es tonto, come on—“

Fuck, all he can think about right now is Nutella. Just eating it right off the spoon — actually, wait, no, that’s the opposite of the mouthfeel he wants right now. So sticky. He wants water, and then crunchy something. He tries to make himself sit up and do something about that but willpower is losing big time against his heavy limbs, at least until Vanessa starts trying to roll him over.

“Move,” she says. “You’re probably sitting on them.”

“Yo, don’t blame me just ‘cause you’re disorganized,” he says. She wiggles her hands underneath his ass and he makes a squeakily displeased noise. Ruben’s laughing at them both, which immediately puts him in the firing line once searching underneath Usnavi comes up empty.

“You,” Vanessa accuses, pointing.

“Me?” Ruben asks, innocently, except Ruben’s innocent face always makes him look like the guiltiest person in the history of guilty people, and he must know it because he flicks the papers out of his sleeve and gives Vanessa a wide-eyed shrug like _how did this happen, what a mystery._

“ _You_ ,” says Vanessa again, but apparently can’t think of how to expand on that ‘cause she just kisses him very pointedly, pulling him in by the front of his sweater. Halfway through he says “I’m really thirsty” while still kissing her and then they both just laugh hysterically against each others faces for a really long time.

“See,” Usnavi says, squirming out from underneath them and taking over Vanessa’s abandoned attempt to roll. It was inevitable, really. He leans over the side of the bed to grab for the bagful of snacks he brought up fro the store earlier while he’s sitting up. “Buncha lightweights.”

***

It feels like discovering a secret to have noticed it, but since they’ve been dating him Usnavi’s figured out that Ruben is nearly as fidgety as he is. It’s just instead of being all limbs all over the place, Ruben does it in all these subtle, compressed ways. It makes Usnavi feel way less self-conscious about his own twitchiness. Still, he sometimes thinks it must drive Ruben crazy trying to keep it so hidden. Usnavi gave up on trying to stay still years ago, but he can recognise those little things, like the tiny movements in Ruben’s jaw that means he’s probably drawing shapes on the roof of his mouth with his tongue, or the dreamy repetitive movements of his fingers when they find a nice texture to run over.

Vanessa was right, Ruben suits relaxed. Two joints in he’s letting that urge loose some more, slouched down with his sweater halfway pulled up, playing a little drumbeat on his tummy. His face is all squished up from the awkward position in a way that shouldn’t be appealing but really is because he looks so deeply contented right now, blinking slow and with his mouth open in an expression that’s halfway between a smile and a concussion, so Usnavi can see his tongue and has to focus all his energy on not reaching into Ruben’s mouth to poke it. Vanessa beatboxes along to the beat Ruben’s tapping out. Usnavi can hear how dry her mouth is on the plosives. He passes her the bottle of water then kisses Ruben on his exposed belly.

“Our boy’s got rhythm,” he says, joyfully.

“I did until you threw it off,” Ruben says, fluffing Usnavi’s hair with both hands, and then he wriggles one up inside his sleeve until it reemerges with a bright little plastic something that he starts playing with.

“Wait,” Usnavi says. “Pause, what in the fuck is that and why is it so many colors? I’m into it.”

“Snake,” Vanessa says decisively. “But I might be saying that ‘cause I forgot how to make my eyes look at things oh, about an hour ago, could be anything.”

“It’s too small to be a snake,” Usnavi disagrees. “It’d have to be a, a, a what do they call the baby snakes?”

“Snakelets?” Vanessa suggests. “Snakitos.”

“Nah, nah, keep your bullshit,” Usnavi says. “It’s the, um, the wiggly one. Worms.”

“It’s a tangle toy,” Ruben says. “It’s for tangling. Um. It’s, uh, it’s like a sensory thing, it’s…never mind, it’s just a thing. Good distraction for if you need something to help you chill out or whatever.”

His hands go still. Usnavi knows when to let something drop, so he just nods and reaches over to stroke the smooth plastic. “You’ll be a beautiful big snake one day, little worm baby,” he tells it.

“That’s so not how snakes work,” Ruben says, then folds Usnavi’s hands around the toy, moving his fingers for him. The little plastic joints shift and twist with a satisfying ease. “See?”

_“Ooh_ ,” Usnavi coos, fascinated. “I love it _._ You guys can leave, I’m set for the night. And maybe for my entire life.”

“You can keep it if you want,” Ruben says.

“I can _keep it_?” Usnavi repeats, astonished. He cradles it carefully in his palms. “Ruben! Honestly, seriously, you’re giving me this? But it’s yours? For distractions?”

“Yours now,” Ruben says. “I got three for twelve dollars, you don’t need to look at me like I just gave you a unicorn. And I’ve got other stuff with me if I need it, anyway,” at which point he shakes down his other sleeve awkwardly till something falls out of the cuff. It’s a hacky-sack. He tosses it from hand-to-hand in an absent-minded way.

“What the fuck, you’re like a walking toy store,” Vanessa says. “How much shit do you have up there? I never feel it when you’re hugging me.”

“Oh my god I can keep it,” Usnavi says to himself. What an awesome present. A gift that keeps on giving, literally ‘cause there’s no stiff point to stall on, it just loops and loops and loops infinitely around his fingers. Someone invented this amazing thing and then Ruben tells him there’s ones that are _fuzzy_ or have other different feelings all over them so maybe Usnavi’s easily impressed but his brain is blown all the way to fucking Jupiter right now. Like, people can just buy these for a couple of dollars and own them and give them to Usnavi like it’s not the coolest shit ever? Loop and loop and loop. He can feel Ruben watching his hands intently.

“What?”

“Nothing,“ Ruben says. “You look like you’re having fun.”

Loop. Loop. Loop. It makes his hands feel better. Calmer despite the movement, like they’ve found a task they can settle into confidently instead of dancing around restlessly searching and constantly fumbling.

“I can see why this would chill someone out,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ruben says, in an odd voice that Usnavi’s way too high to decipher. He’s smiling in a private way. “I’m sure you can.”

***

Three people in a relationship is very much like a permanent game of human Tetris, but they always find a way to fit. Vanessa with her head in Ruben’s lap, Usnavi lying with his against Vanessa’s shoulder, armed with a bag of chips and their third joint and hell, it's hitting him harder than he’d expected, though he sure as shit ain't gonna complain about it. He’s not sure he knows what zen is, exactly, but he’s pretty sure this feeling is what people mean when they talk about zen, everything all haloed round the edges looking like it’s suspended in the daylight of that bright, warm hour before sunset and he’s feeling like his blood is carbonated, sweet uplifting little bubbles of inexplicable delight. He holds the joint out for whoever wants to take it, rolls onto his front and shifts down so he can nuzzle his face blissfully against Vanessa’s chest. Much better than a shoulder.

“Eyes are up here, creeper,” she says.

“Your eyes ain’t as comfortable to lay on,” he answers, muffled.

“You don’t know that, you’ve never tried.”

Which is true, so obviously he has to immediately attempt it, which just means gently headbutting Vanessa in the face until she’s shouting with laughter for Ruben to save her. Ruben tugs the back of Usnavi’s hair so he has to sit up properly.

“Behave yourself,” he says.

“Nope,” Usnavi says, grinning at him. Ruben tuts.

“My hero,” Vanessa says, giggling to herself. She smiles up at Ruben affectionately while Usnavi rearranges position again.

Did he say Vanessa high was the cutest shit he’s ever seen? Because she is, but also so is Ruben, which means Vanessa and Ruben high _together_ are so far beyond the cutest shit he’s ever seen that it’s pointless even trying to describe it. Ruben’s smoking with one hand, messing with Vanessa’s hair with the other, taking strands of it and crossing them over her face at random, or holding it over her mouth so she has a little temporary mustache.

“You must have the prettiest hair in the entire universe,” he tells her earnestly.

“Aw, thanks babe,” Vanessa says. She reaches up and strokes his chin. “And you have the prettiest beard.”

“Uh, excuse you,” Usnavi objects.

“I calls em like I sees ‘em.” She stretches out to flutter her fingers across Usnavi’s jaw. “Scratchy. Ruben is soft. Ruben wins at beard!”

“Ayyy,” Ruben cheers, lazily.

“But—“

“Sssh,” Ruben says, consolingly, and moves Usnavi’s hand to his chin so he can pet Ruben’s beard too. “No fighting, just soft.”

“Do you use conditioner on this?” Usnavi asks, then “wait, if Ruben has softest beard and best belly and Vanessa has —“ he pokes her boob. “Bloop. And the shiniest hair. Am…am I just the pointy scratchy one? Am I the worst pillow?”

That’s such a disappointing thing to learn. He droops sadly over Vanessa, which functionally isn’t that much different than the position he was already in so probably they can’t tell, but _he_ knows he’s drooping sadly.

“Maybe a little bit pointy and scratchy,” Ruben says. “Too much elbows, not enough padding. But that’s ok, you’re the softest on the inside.”

“Aww,” Usnavi says.

“Eww,” Vanessa says. “And _everyone’s_ soft on the inside. Bodies are squishy and disgusting.”

“I meant in his heart.”

“Gross.”

“I meant his _spirit_.”

“Oh. That is true,” she says. “Soft in the middle, crunchy on the outside. He’s like an acorn.”

“Did you just call me _crunchy_?”

“Vanessa, I don’t think you know what an acorn or Usnavi is.”

“I do too,” she says. “An acorn is tiny but on the inside there’s a giant beautiful tree. Just like Usnavi.”

“Oh, querida, that’s lovely,” Usnavi says, touched. He clasps both hands over his heart to make sure all the feelings there stay inside. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

“Technically, inside an acorn is mmph mrhkgl,” Ruben says, while Usnavi reaches over to silence him by shoving a handful of doritos in his mouth.

“It’s lovely,” Usnavi says again, severely, and removes his hand. Vanessa doesn’t get poetic very often. Usnavi likes to encourage it when she does.

“It is lovely,” Ruben agrees meekly, through a mouthful of chips. “And so biologically accurate.”

And okay, Usnavi also likes to encourage Ruben to talk science at them, so once they’ve been in comfortably silent territory again for a while Usnavi says, “so what is actually inside an acorn?” and watches the Overexcited Professor look descend over Ruben’s face like one of those snapchat filters. Vanessa makes a happy humming sound when Ruben starts talking and Usnavi wants to ask her to do it again so he can record it and like use it as his ringtone or something because it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever heard but that’d probably be weird and he doesn’t wanna interrupt so he just saves it as an audio file somewhere in his head. That makes it a definite two for two on contented partners. Usnavi is just _nailing_ it tonight.

***

Ruben has this miraculous way of making even dry or overly complicated stuff fascinating, segueing through acorns to houseplants to exactly what he’d been shading his college friends for earlier, explaining all kinds of interesting obscure facts about different psychoactive plants, from the scary-sounding ones that make people jump out of windows or forget their own name to things that sound like Usnavi’s kinda night if he were into that stuff. It’s almost poetic in itself, that particular beat to Ruben’s voice when he lists out names and effects and interactions like he’s telling bedtime stories and with Usnavi’s playlist still working away in the background like a backing track. Usnavi’s pretty sure they might have been listening enraptured for hours, hotboxing out his room with his vision softly kaleidoscoping from early evening to late, interspersed by those odd misty absences in between from when he forgets to commit what’s happening to memory.

He gets those gaps in everyday sober life too, but here it feels natural like a river flowing, not the ricochet blasting into a thousand different targets a minute that his brain usually is. Like, he still doesn’t remember how he got here but he’s confident in the fact that there was a linear journey from point A even if he can't _remember_ jack about points B-C-D-E et cetera, instead of constantly feeling as if he’s in a glitching teleporter being flung from A to T to Z to B with no warning about when it’ll happen. He gives himself mental whiplash at least sixty times a day.  Seems unfair he can’t always think this smoothly, if the potential’s clearly there somewhere, but that’s okay: he can think clearer for now which means he’s figured it all out, that _right now_ is all he needs to deal with, not that loud cacophony of past-present-unfinished-unresolved-unattainable that’s usually yelling from all corners of his head.

Right now it’s just looking up at Ruben who’s stopped talking and is kissing Vanessa a little too sloppy, Usnavi lying underneath and in between them like they’re a bridge connecting over him, it’s that inviting line where Ruben’s jaw angles down from his ear. Right now its just Vanessa with her lipstick smudged at the side of her mouth where she usually holds the joint between her teeth and lipstick smudged all across the roach she’s holding between her fingertips and thumb, and when she sits back from Ruben there’s the same deep dusky pink printed across his lips too. She leans away and takes a slow hit while he tries to pull her in again. 

“Ah-ah. Patience is a virtue, Ruben,” she says with a smirk, holding the joint towards him.

Ruben takes a drag while she’s still holding it, says, “and what makes you think I’m virtuous, Vanessa?” with smoke curling out of his mouth.

Aw, goddammit, they’re both so hot, Usnavi has to intercept, sitting up to catch the last of the smoke against his own mouth. Ruben immediately sinks into it, tongue moving against Usnavi’s in oh, a way that is _definitely_ not virtuous at all, till Vanessa turns Usnavi’s face to her and as if it weren’t all enough to make his head spin already her lips against his bring another bittersweet rush of shotgunned smoke. He breathes in, the smoke and Vanessa’s perfume and her breath, and Ruben’s kissing the back of his neck, a perfect convergence of things to be surrounded by. Usnavi’s on top of the fucking world, and that faintly possessive sense of achievement sparkles all through him: this is his bedroom, his idea, his evening, it’s going so good. Smiling and cuddly and loose beside him, his Ruben and his Vanessa. He drums his heels against the mattress happily. Damn. Life can be so kind sometimes.

“Hey,” he says to Vanessa and Ruben, feeling generous, “either of you wanna roll the next one? I’ll let you, ‘cause I’m nice.”

“Eh, no,” Vanessa says. “You’re right, yours are way better.”

“The best,” Ruben agrees.

Usnavi beams, full of pride, and sets the book up on his lap again. “Awesome.”


	18. dulzura

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: just a quick one in honor of (though not set on) valentine's day, for enigmairi's prompt "Ruben decides to do something spontaneous and romantic."]

“I’m gonna do something spontaneous and romantic,” Ruben announces over dinner.

“ _Awww_ ,” Usnavi says, already going all gooey and misty-eyed even though literally nothing has happened yet.

“That’s great, babe,” Vanessa says. “What is it?”

“…I don’t actually know yet,” Ruben admits. “I had this big urge to do something right now but I couldn’t think of anything, I don’t have much practice at romantic gestures. I just thought I should warn you, as soon as I come up with specifics it’s gonna happen and it’ll be  _awesome_.”

Vanessa’s not sure Ruben’s got the hang of  _spontaneous_  either, but she’s not gonna tell him that. It’s sweet that he’s trying.

***

A full week later and Vanessa had totally forgotten about the conversation until Ruben sits them both down with the kind of expression you’d wear for telling someone you ran over their beloved dog, and says “I still couldn’t think of anything good. It took me five days to come up with  _buy them flowers,_  but flowers are just houseplants that die after a couple of days, and then I thought that giving you an actual plant might be nice but then it might also just be like,  _here, I have given you a Responsibility_ , which is more of a pain in the ass than anything. And then I thought chocolate, but Usnavi works in a bodega so that seems kind of pointless, there’s chocolate everywhere. And both of those ideas suck anyway. Romantic gestures are  _really hard_ , guys.”

“Yeah, that’s why I never do them,” Usnavi commiserates, which is just the biggest load of bullshit ever, Usnavi pretty much leaks romantic gestures out of his pores without even realizing it, but she doesn’t call him out because Ruben’s looking melodramatically morose so first priority is curbing that shit before it turns into a one-act tragedy.

“It’s okay, honey,” she says. “We really don’t mind.”

“Just you being here is awesome enough,”  Usnavi agrees. “It’s fine you couldn’t think of anything.”

“No, no, I did think of one thing,” Ruben says. “It’s just that it is dumb as hell. But I  _really_  tried and if you laugh at me for it I’ll probably die, so if you could maybe just pretend it’s not really stupid, that would be ideal.”

He picks up his backpack and then hesitates after unzipping it. “Don’t expect miracles, that’s all I’m saying, because—“

“Just show us, Ruben,” Vanessa says impatiently.

Ruben reaches into his bag and pulls out a little tupperware box that he opens and presents with a resigned  _well here we are_  face. Vanessa and Usnavi lean in with interest.

Huh.

So this might be the cutest thing that’s ever happened to her.

“Oh,  _wow_ ,” Usnavi says.

“Is that me and Usnavi as cookies?” she asks even though it’s pretty obvious.

Ruben points in the box. “Also a heart. Because of, y’know, the feelings.”

“I’ve never been a cookie before,” Usnavi says, awed.

“You  _made_  these?”

“Mm-hmm,” Ruben says shyly. “Also I have another box just full of normal shaped ones in my bag, these didn’t turn out as good as I wanted so I hoped maybe I could distract you from the aesthetics with quantity?”

“What are you talking about? These are  _great_ ,” she says, and she means it. She already knew Ruben’s decent at art, and it translates pretty well into icing. Like, they’re not gonna win any professional competitions, but definitely Instagram-worthy. “Hold up, nobody eat anything yet, I have to share this with the world.”

In the two seconds it takes her to go get her phone from her bag and come back, Usnavi’s cookie has mysteriously acquired a little bite mark out of the corner of the hat. Ruben is hiding a smile and Usnavi is staring over into a corner with what she thinks he must think is a guileless look on his face, which apparently means making his eyes as round as possible and holding his breath.

“Usnavi!”

“Sorry querida, couldn’t help myself,” he says. “I taste too good.”

She takes a picture anyway - the bite mark kinda adds authenticity, actually - and the whole time she’s uploading and putting a nice filter and a caption on she’s imagining Ruben in his kitchen wearing his serious concentration face, icing cookies because he wanted to do something romantic for them, and she has to take a bite of her own cookie to stop herself from just like screaming or something.

It’s a good distraction, because holy shit, this is the kind of baking Vanessa could be persuaded to kill a guy for.

_”_ Fuck me,” she says. “Is there anything you  _can’t_ do, Ruben?”

Ruben has just been sitting quietly turning every shade of red known to mankind while they fuck around with photos and taste-testing, but he smiles hopefully at them both. “Lots of things, actually. So you like them?”

Usnavi puts down his cookie and grabs both of Ruben’s shoulders firmly. “I stopped eating to tell you this so that’s how serious I am when I say I  _love_  it. Also, did you know you’re cute as hell? Best boyfriend. All-time  _best_  boyfriend.”

Vanessa says, “I didn’t wanna say it ‘cause it’d be harsh on Usnavi, but he doesn’t bake for me, so…”

“I’m not even gonna argue with that right now,” Usnavi says. “Stop the press, alert the government, take it to the fucking bank, Ruben Marcado is officially better at romance than me, signed sealed and delivered by Usnavi De la Vega on this whatever date it is today just before I died from how fucking perfect this cookie is.”

Ruben does a tiny little fist-pump and whispers “nailed it!” to himself.

 

 


	19. tiempo suéter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: it's been one exact year since i posted the first chapter of Maps! i'm not sure that i should say "happy anniversary" to the day that i gave ruben permanent trauma because thats pretty insensitive to him, but it's been a great year of creating things and i am very happy to have had all this ruben time. i love my boy very much and he's good fictional company. i'm very happy to have had all you guys along the way too! thanks for all the encouragement.
> 
> anyway here's a fic for the prompt 'ruben gets a blue version of lin's The Grey Sweater', which ended up being over 4000 words of emotional introspection about ruben's PTSD as it relates to his clothing, because i'm me and this is how i do. some immediate post-jamaica pre-NY recovery so be aware, but i don't think it gets too heavy]

It’s March, and Ruben doesn’t dress for springtime. That said, he also isn’t going to wear any of his old sweaters from Before, even though his ma kept his favorite ones when she was sorting through his apartment after the funeral.

If you’d asked him in January how he thought this year was going to go, it probably wouldn’t have included his own funeral. It  _definitely_ wouldn’t have included him thinking about his own funeral two weeks after the event actually took place.

The idea of anyone, even if it’s only Ma, going through everything he owns makes him nauseous. Nobody sets up their living space under the assumption that someone’s going to walk in and see every last inch of it some day. He’s sick of people being in his possessions, in his private spaces, in his personal space. It makes him feel unclean, someone else’s fingerprints over things he never said they could touch.

The idea of Ma knowing him so well that she knew exactly what things to save makes him cry himself to sleep more than once, deafened by a confused babble of grief for himself and for her and for everything. He sometimes sits and just looks in the drawer that he’s put all his Before-clothes in, but he never takes them out.

She saved these because they were important even though she thought he’d never be able to wear them again, and she wasn’t wrong, even though he survived. Those sweaters don’t belong to whoever he is right now. He’s afraid of what they’ll look like on him, afraid that they’ll only reconfirm what he knows to be true: Ruben is dead. Ruben is gone. Ruben fits wrong in his old clothes like he fits wrong in his new skin.

***

It’s April, and Ruben doesn’t wear plaid any more.

Two white concentric, five white vertical, one green concentric, four green vertical, one pink concentric, three pink vertical. One white button. Cuff of his shirt. The flight to Jamaica was three and a half hours, Ian stopped talking to him after five minutes. Ruben counted the line patterns on the cuff of his sleeve over and over, anything to keep himself from imagining what might happen once they landed.

He could have done a thousand things different on that plane if he’d been thinking clearly, if he’d not been awake for almost three days at that point, if he was less delirious with fear and fatigue. Too late now. All he has is the memory of navy plaid with white green pink stripes and a lifetime of regrets. The shirt itself was lost to the fire Ian set like a sacrifice, burning the only things Ruben owned in Jamaica, and now Ruben’s been back in America for a month and he doesn’t ever wear plaid.

***

It’s May and Ruben’s mom buys all his clothes for him now, says he can’t keep wearing someone else’s hand-me-downs forever.

He’s been draped in charity fabrics since February, things given to him from people at the hotel he’d lived in while he was in Jamaica. When he told them he was going back home he had tried to return it all, Cleo’s maternity sweaters and Marcus’ patterned shirts and so many things that were the last traces of Mrs Campbell’s late husband, saved in memoriam the same way Ruben’s mother saved his own things. They’d all insisted he keep everything they gave him. The first things he’d owned in the first days of his new life, the selflessness behind the gifting probably the only comfort that helped him hold onto the last frayed pieces of his unravelled self, Ruben existing only in the stitches and threads of donated clothing and donated medical assistance.

Now the trial’s in full swing, he wonders every day if he should’ve stayed away, in the place where he’d spent two months grasping desperately for life and for a living and for breath, the air tasting of salt like the sea like tears, where people were kind and didn’t ever ask questions and didn’t ever sit him in front of a jury and cross-examine him to so they can decide whether his pain is a justified penance for all his mistakes.

His mom buys him an outfit to wear to court. The blazer hangs wrong on his shoulders because he doesn’t know what size he is any more and because he’s hunching over, never quite small enough to disappear but trying like hell anyway. He feels like a Medusa, some fearful lonely creature that shouldn’t be looked on by human eyes because something catastrophic is bound to come of it, and there’s so many eyes on him while he walks up the courtroom steps, while he takes the stand, while they take a recess because he starts weeping too hard to answer any questions. He feels like a corpse at a funeral home, dressed up and made up to be as lifelike and formal as possible but the dead will always look dead, he’s still decaying from the inside out, nobody’s fooled.

Jason sits up straight in the stand, and his suit fits him perfectly.

Ruben changes immediately back into sweatpants and a hoodie when they get home every time, pulls the hood so far over his head that he can’t see past it. His ma knocks on the bedroom door after the final decision is made and asks if he wants to talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk at all. His ma lays out clean jeans and shirts on the chair in his room every night and he ignores them, wears the same pair of sweatpants and the same hoodie every day for nearly two weeks, at home and to therapy too because who gives a shit whether his therapist thinks he’s gross. No matter what lie he dresses up in, they’d both know he’s broken and disgusting and defiled underneath anyway.

Eventually, Ma buys him three more pairs of sweatpants so at least he’ll be wearing clean ones. They’re all identical to the first pair, grey and soft and badly-fitting. Every time he has to hitch them up and re-tighten the drawstring around his wasted body he wonders if she’s trying to make some kind of point by always buying his old size, like he doesn’t already know he’s less than he used to be without her constantly reminding him. Ma tries to feed him back to health even though he’s never hungry and he shouts sometimes and sometimes refuses to eat and at one point throws the plate across the room, because why not act like a toddler now that he can’t even dress himself like an adult any more.

***

It’s June and none of his choices can be unconscious when every day Ruben’s consciously having to choose to just stay alive. That alone takes so much of his energy that even the tiniest of crossroads feel huge, things he’d usually autopilot through: what does he want for dinner, does he want to watch tv or read or sleep, should he sit in the living room or his bedroom or try to sit in the yard?

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know  _anything_. There were so many bad choices in his past which seemed so small at the time that now nothing ever feels small, everything seems to be an integral part of the foundation he’s struggling to build, so that if he makes the wrong decision now it might all fall back down later. What does he want to wear? Is he still the kind of guy who wears soft blue crew-neck sweaters? Is he even allowed to still be that person, does he  _want_  to be, who is Ruben going to be from this point forward?

He doesn’t know. Ma doesn’t lay out outfits on his chair any more. Ruben hasn’t dared ask her if it’s because she’s trying to let him choose on his own or if it’s just that she’s given up on him.

Sometimes he tries to pick clothes out for himself, tells himself he’s not going anywhere anyway so it doesn’t matter what he ends up with, he just needs to learn how to make decisions again. Every time it ends with most of his wardrobe strewn on the floor around him while he hyperventilates, every time he ends up back in grey sweatpants, grey hoodie.

***

It’s July, it’s time for another day of therapy, and Ruben begrudgingly admits it might finally be helping.

The thing that makes him aware of this is kinda stupid: he’s sitting down to put his sneakers on when he notices there’s a coffee stain on the thigh of his sweatpants, a little circle where he’d clearly been resting a mug. And once he sees that he also sees his hoodie has had better days, the cuffs smudged with miscellaneous dust and smelling like he slept in it, probably because he did. It wouldn’t be the worst state his therapist has seen him in: he’s showed up there in clothes he’s been wearing for a week straight, unshaven and unshowered and not even bothering with deodorant because, as he’s been saying for months, who gives a shit. But suddenly he  _does_. He can’t go outside like this. It’s embarrassing.

Embarrassed is something he hasn’t had the energy to be in quite a while. Can’t say it was the first thing he wanted to get back from when he was normal, but he missed it in a weird way.

“Give me a minute,” he says to Ma, who is already waiting by the door with her keys in hand. “I need to get changed.”

It shouldn’t take long. It’s not like anything in his wardrobe is anything other than plain and generic anyway and it doesn’t matter and he’s going to be late and he can’t choose, he can’t choose, there’s too many things and he doesn’t want to fuck it up and he’s already fucking it up by making it into a big deal when it doesn’t  _matter_.

“Rubén, we really have to get going.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Are you okay in there? Cariño? I’m coming in.”

Ma finds him standing in front of the closet crying, and she just sighs.

Gently moving him aside, she selects two pairs of jeans and two sweaters, all in nondescript shades of navy, and says “That narrows it down, just pick one of each.”

“But I don’t know which one I’m supposed to pick,” he says desperately.

“This isn’t a test, Rubén,” she tells him. “Nothing will change just because you choose one pair of jeans over the other.”

“But—“

“Butting is for goats,” she says. “How about this: I’ll count down from five and at the end, just point at anything. Don’t think too hard about it. There isn’t a wrong answer.”

There’s always a wrong answer, he wants to say, but before he can she says  _five, four—_

He tries his best, he really does. Still ends up twenty minutes late for therapy, changing his mind as soon as they shut the front door and trying to run back inside, freaking out in the car on the way over because he realizes he should’ve worn the other jeans, they’re slightly softer and these ones don’t fit right at all and he fucked up, he can’t even make this decision without fucking up, he can’t do anything right — but at least they get there eventually, and Ruben’s wearing pants, so it could’ve gone worse even though he is outright sobbing as he walks through the main entrance.

When he tells his therapist that he’s so late because he chose the outfit by himself (well, sort of by himself) she claps with genuine delight, beaming. She doesn’t even mention the fact that he’s still got tears running down his face, which is nice of her.

At the end of the session she asks how he’d feel about reducing his sessions from three times a week to only twice, so that he can start trying to cope independently. It takes him a full week to be able to decide that he’s willing to try it out.

***

It’s August and Ruben for the first time in a long time doesn’t force his mind detached from his body while he showers, and that means that for the first time he’s present enough to realize that his ribs aren’t showing through his skin any more. For the first time in a long time, after he showers he takes the spare towel he always hangs over the mirror off so he can look at himself naked, he can press his hands against his belly and draw phantom lines down where his hipbones were until recently too sharp without the extra layer of padding that’s always been there, coming back again now. He’s still smaller than he used to be, he’s still nothing anyone would enjoy looking at, but he feels substantial again, he feels corporeal.

For the first time since getting back home Ruben doesn’t get dressed in the bathroom, goes to his bedroom with just a towel wrapped around his waist. He doesn’t walk, he runs like he used to when he was a kid and had to turn the light out and then go back through the dark hallway to his room. Thudding footsteps and bedroom door slamming behind him so that whatever terrors of overimagination lurk in quiet suburban houses at night didn’t have time to catch him before he was safely back in bed.  Everyone knows that monsters can’t catch you when you’re underneath a quilt, as long as your feet are covered and your eyes are closed. Everyone knows the thrill of risking and running and winning one more night and okay, Ruben’s an adult and totally aware he’s not actually running away from monsters. Nobody’s even home who might’ve seen him, but he sits down on his bed and his heart beats an excited scared-safe-scared-safe pace like a victory march anyway.

***

It’s September, and Ruben’s started walking from the bathroom to his room in just a towel every time he showers. A personal challenge to himself that he accepts means it’s inevitable that eventually someone’s gonna bump into him, and it ends up being Paola.

Neither of them say anything, freezing for a long five seconds before Ruben runs to his room. This time he really does hide under the quilt with his eyes tightly closed until he calms down again enough to put some clothes on and rationalize with himself. Obviously he’d known it was a risk. That’s the  _point_ of challenging himself, and it’s not like she wasn’t aware. Paola’s been here through everything in the past seven months. Paola was there for the trial, where there were pictures. But that was Ruben disembodied, closeups of his arms and chest and back without his face visible. Damage without the humanity. Now it’s undeniably his, in their home, and actually having someone see is very different to photographs. Seeing it in person is probably very different to photographs too.

She comes to his room later, after he thought she was already asleep. Her hair is in two braids either side of her head and she’s wearing leggings and an old t-shirt. It’s so faded that the picture’s barely visible but Ruben knows it’s touristy-as-hell New York City skyline, barely a step away from an I <3 NY shirt. It used to be his way back when he was a teenager, a gift from Abuela down in Rochester when she first moved over from Vega Alta.

Paola doesn’t say anything about what happened earlier. She just holds out a book, as faded and familiar as the shirt: it’s the copy of The Hobbit that belongs to his mother, that she’s had since long before Ruben was born. Ma used to read it to Ruben, and Ruben read it to the girls when he used to babysit them.

“Read to me?” she asks.

Wordless, he lifts the side of his quilt so she can get in and make herself comfortable next to him while he takes the book, flips the yellowing pages against his finger.

“Do the voices too,” she says.

“Are you implying I ever  _wouldn’t_  do the voices? I’m offended.”

He reads to her until she falls asleep with her head on his shoulder like she’s still a baby instead of an eighteen year old - an adult, he suddenly realises, which makes him sad and proud and frightened and altogether too many different things to be feeling when it’s gone eleven PM. It doesn’t matter right now. Now she’s just his little sister fallen asleep against his side in his old hand-me-down clothes, and Ruben is wearing his pajamas too: a long-sleeved dark blue t-shirt, and his pajama pants are plaid.

***

It’s October and one day without even thinking Ruben puts his old mottled blue sweater on, the one that always used to be his favorite. He does a mental double-take when he realizes that even though he knows the last time he wore it was to that godawful night at the rave, it’s not really  _Reminding_  him of it with a capital R.

Actually it just reminds him of…himself. Ruben still doesn’t know what that means. But he wants it to mean  _something_ , and something more than just sleeping and surviving and therapy. He wants to mean something more than healing.

The cooling fall weather is a relief. Layers on layers on layers. He’s been trying to get out more recently, and today he’s wearing his old blue sweater, which he covers with a scarf and a jacket and he leaves a note for his ma to tell her he’s visiting IMH again one last time. He’s already outside before he starts second-guessing it, and what’s all that decision-making practice worth if he can’t start applying it to bigger things? Stick to the course. It’s only a goodbye.

Ma hugs him carefully when he gets home, tells him that he’s very brave. Ruben says he wants to be alone for a while, sits down at his desk in his old blue sweater and searches the internet for teaching jobs, anything anywhere outside of Philadelphia.

***

It’s November and Ruben is in the same blazer and tie he wore on the day Jason finally got his bullshit lightweight sentence in court. This time he’s trying to sit up with proper posture, laptop in front of him, Skype window open. It’s actually kinda better this way than in person: nobody can see his legs trembling under the desk. He prays for better results than the last time he wore this outfit, which is hardly what he needs to be thinking about right now. Maybe he should’ve worn something else, but he doesn’t own a lot of business casual any more.

He doesn’t expect to make the cut. He’d been totally honest in the first interview, which is always a terrible idea in interviews even at the best of times. It’s just he’s not good at lying and of course they want to know why the sudden change in career and they’re gonna do a background check anyway, so it was easier to just be honest and say yeah, if you hire me for this position there’s gonna be some  _deeply_ unusual baggage.

Professor Daniel “call me Dan” Wicks, the man with Ruben’s future new career in his hands, had raised his eyebrows and hummed and said “that sounds like it’s gonna be some homework for me then. Give me a week, I’ll be in touch with our decision.”

A week and five days later, Professor Wicks sets up a second Skype appointment with him and skips the small talk for: “so, it took a little longer than I expected because I had to talk with ha,  _quite_  a few people. We’ve reviewed the, uh, circumstances you mentioned during our first conversation.”

Ruben braces for disappointment.

“I understand that this is a very unique situation,” Dan continues. “I’ve gotta be honest with you, Dr Marcado, it is not something I was particularly expecting to deal with.”

“You and me both,” Ruben says dryly.

“So before we talk about your start date, I wanted to discuss whether you might already have some thoughts about what measures we’d need to put in place to ensure the wellbeing of yourself and the students.”

“Wait,” Ruben says. “Rewind, wait, I  _got_  the job? You’re  _hiring_  me?”

“We’re hiring you,” Dan confirms, and his serious interview face turns into a grin. “Dude, we’ve seen your credentials, you think we’re gonna let someone like you slip through our fingers just because you’ve got a bit of a backstory? I mentioned that I interviewed you to Brian - he’s the head of biochem - and he nearly had an aneurysm. He teaches your papers in class. Don’t get people like you applying for community college positions every day, you know. ”

“Wow,” Ruben says, then laughs, slightly hysterically. “Holy crap - uh, sorry - oh my god. I’m just…thank you! Thank you so much. But, just to be clear, I did tell you that I’ve not been back to work since the, um, incident at my last job, because of the PTSD? So I might need a bit of an adjustment period?”

“Yes, yes, we’ll make it work,” Dan says firmly. “That’s why I’m calling you now, so that we can make the transition as low-stress as possible. When are you moving down to New York? I was thinking maybe if we start you off teaching summer school in July, it’s smaller classes and not a big workload, gives you some time to settle in.”

“Gives Brian some time to get me to autograph one of my papers for him.”

“I know you’re kidding but he’d genuinely probably cry,” Dan says, sounding thrilled at the possibility. “Don’t tell him I told you that. But definitely do it and take pictures.”

Ruben fumbles his way through talking safety precautions, psychological support, keeping off the radar and out of the public eye, but he’s barely paying attention to himself. He got a job. Shit, this blazer has definitely redeemed itself.

The second the call hangs up he undoes his top button, loosens his tie to the way he’s always preferred to wear it, and starts searching for cheap apartments in New York City.

***

It’s December and Ruben gets a sweater from his ma. Same as every year, either for Christmas or Dia de los Reyes or sometimes both: a predictable gift, maybe, but Ruben’s always been fine with not being surprised, and you can never have too much good quality comfort clothing.

It’s different to his normal style, though. Ruben usually wears crew necks, even before he had things that needed to be hidden by a high neckline. This one looks deceptively low with it’s more angled shape, but when he pulls it on it covers everything and the collar is oversized without being too restrictive like turtlenecks are, though there’s two buttons that means he can make it even less revealing if he needs to.

Not something he would’ve chosen for himself. Veers dangerously close to being distinctive. His mom says she thought maybe he’d like some variety, sounding a little bit worried the way she often does when she tries to expand Ruben’s horizons because it’s always 50-50 on how he’ll feel about it, but it fits properly, the fabric is soft and protective against the back of his neck, and it’s  _his_  shade of blue, closer to a personality trait than just a favorite color.

So few things feel like Ruben any more that he’ll cling onto whatever sense of home he can find in shades of royal and navy. The sweater is something different and something his both at the same time, and he hadn’t really considered that maybe he could have both at once.

“I like it,” he says.

***

It’s January and Ruben is quickly folding whatever clothes he grabs first to stuff into a suitcase, not wanting to think too hard about what he takes with him. His mom is pulling everything out again immediately so that she can very carefully fold it and replace it. He can’t see how her method yields any different results to what he’s doing other than slowing the process down, really, but it seems to be making her happy so he lets it slide.

Ma takes four different sweaters out and doesn’t refold them, laying them out side-by-side on the bed.

“It’s going to be cold tomorrow, cariño, and you have a long way to go,” she says. “Pick which one you want.”

Ruben hesitates.

“We can count down if you need to,” Ma says.

“No,” he says, picks the blue sweater with the buttons that he got for Christmas and drapes it over the back of the chair before he starts turning it into some kind of overblown philosophical dilemma. He’s made the decision to pack up and move states away and start a brand new career, he can do these things too. “I’ll wear this one.”

It’s hard to sleep that night. He doesn’t know if he’s made the right choice, about the sweater or about anything else that’s going to happen. Is it what the old Ruben would have done? Is it what the new Ruben should do?

He doesn’t know if it’s the right choice. But it feels like the necessary one. So he wears his new familiar-unfamiliar sweater while he says his goodbyes in the morning, he catches his bus feeling like himself and like someone completely different both at once, and he waits to see who Ruben Marcado might become under the New York City skyline.


	20. dejarlo atrás

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: been doing a lot of tumblr fic, so there'll be a few updates from there today! this chapter: for the prompt "who did ruben encounter on his final visit to imh? what was it like?"]

It takes some time to get round to it what with the million other priorities he had like not dying or losing his mind when he first came back home, but at some point in October, Ruben logs back in to his Facebook account. He’d had internet access from a little cafe in Jamaica, but rarely used it for anything personal, irrationally terrified that somehow Ian would find out.  _You’re gonna be dead to everyone but me. Make sure it stays that way. Your mom is a great cook, did I ever tell you that? And such a nice house._

There are a lot of messages, for saying he’s never really used his Facebook much anyway. A lot of posts on his wall. A lot of _we were so glad to hear about you coming back_ and  _it would be great to see you again sometime_ and  _call us if you need anything._

He’s only skim-reading the posts on his wall when suddenly he hits March and the messages change from welcome backs to  _rest in peace_ and  _prayers are with the family_ and  _may they find comfort knowing he’s in a better place._

 _“_ What, you mean Jamaica?” he mutters to himself, bitterly. “Yeah, some dream vacation that turned out to be.”

Ruben’s a raised Catholic turned atheist, so he’s not unused to prayers being sent his way and appreciates the sentiment if not the action when it’s from family, when it’s from people who he sees regularly. Not people who he hasn’t spoken to since college, since high school. They don’t really want to met up with him, they don’t really want him to call and ask for anything. It’s just what you’re supposed to say and he hates it.

Does it make them feel better to have someone to look at and say  _at least I’m not him,_ or is it just that they can’t stand the idea of anyone going through something without shoving themselves in so they can be part of it? Where were all these people who apparently give so much of a shit about him before all this?

He’s reading through February now, watching the things that happened in reverse: there’s less posts than in March, but still prayers, still thoughts:  _hope they find you, hope you come home soon, hope you’re safe._

Two out of three ain’t bad.

If he scrolls back any further he’s going to reach a point before it happened. He’s going to suddenly find just a normal tagged photo with his sisters, or an article that one of his cousins linked him to. Life is laid out so clearly in this format.

If he checks his friend list he might even still have Jason Cole listed there.

Without checking, without even considering whether it’ll worry anyone when he drops off the grid or whether there’s anything worth saving first, Ruben clicks as fast as possible through to delete his account, and like something possesses his hands he doesn’t stop there. His academic research accounts and his barely-used-anyway Twitter and his old email addresses, any trace of himself that he has any control over is wiped away before he has time to think. He doesn’t want to be contacted, he doesn’t want a timeline of the steps that led him here.  Get rid of everything. Start again new.

When he’s finally sure he’s got it all he sits there breathless like he’s been running. His hands are sweaty but he feels good, he feels better than he has for months. He feels  _free._

Or, he nearly does. There’s one more thing.

***

As arranged a week ago, Dr Young meets Ruben at the hospital entrance. He doesn’t have any of his security passes any more, can’t just wander through on a whim.

“Good morning, Dr Marcado,” she says, tone inscrutable.

“Dr Young,” he replies. “How’s it going?”

“Busy as always,” she answers briskly. “Let me take you to the lab.”

She doesn’t ask how he is or what he’s been up to. The unspoken part of their settlement: don’t drag our name through the mud and we’ll return the favor, nothing to see here, nothing to talk about. He doesn’t know how she feels about any of it, if she even feels about it at all.

Nothing to talk about so they don’t talk. Hospital is loud, he’d forgotten how loud, beeps and yelling and murmuring. Loud in all his senses, bright artificial light, antiseptic smell kicks off too many sense memories. Thinks of a needle painful and unskilled missing the vein and bruising deeply. Thinks of a needle careful and practiced putting in his stitches. His arms hurt. It all hurts _._  His arms itch but he can’t touch them, increases risk of infection in new cuts - no, no, they’re old now, but still the risk of drawing attention. Automatically he goes to tuck his hands into the pockets of his labcoat and hits empty air.

They’re outside the door to his old lab. Ruben doesn’t remember a second of the walk here.

“I’m afraid I can’t stay, I have a lot of work to do,” Dr Young says, holding her pass up to the sensor on the door till the light flickers green and she pushes it ajar. “Someone from the lab will show you out when you’re ready, I’ve informed them all you’ll be visiting.”

“Thankyou,” he says, and she nods at him as she leaves. He takes a second to steel himself before going in, holding the door only just cracked open, when Dr Young calls out “Dr Marcado?” from several paces behind him.

She hesitates when he turns to look at her. Ruben’s pretty sure he’s never seen Dr Young hesitate before. “…You’re looking very well.”

That’s probably the closest he’ll ever get to an apology. It’ll do.

***

Ruben used to be able to walk in here and know everything that was happening in every corner. Could sit in his window-lined office looking out and be able to pinpoint who just had an epiphany and who just fucked up and who just realised that it had been at least an hour since they had coffee.

Ruben likes familiar and there’s none of that to be found here any more. Nothing in the way they ask him questions, carefully treading round the elephant in the room, sentences full of meaningful ellipses and italics: “how…have you  _been_?”, “are you… _alright_?”

Questions even Ruben can’t miss the unspoken cues on: we’re not telling you to talk about the thing, but if you do wanna talk about the thing we’re all dying to know more.

Nothing in the people themselves. Ruben tried his best when he worked here to keep whatever details about them he could straight. He likes being liked, and people like it when you care about their personal lives. Now he can’t remember if Jim was the one with the kid going to college, can’t remember if it was Jenny or Alice who got engaged at the start of the year.

Dave has been promoted to Ruben’s old office. He can keep it. Ruben carefully makes sure to look in any direction except for that wall of windows the whole time he’s here.

There’s a few new faces too, casually finding reasons to walk in within hearing distance of Ruben catching up with his old coworkers. He pauses under the observation.

“Don’t mind the nosy newbies,” Dave says pointedly, and on cue the techs scatter back to their work. “They’ve just heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Ruben mutters.

“Shit, no, I didn’t mean, uh. That wasn’t…I just meant because of how much you did around here, nobody knows their way around a lab like you, haha,” Dave backtracks, looking uncomfortable enough that Alice butts in.

“It’d be great to know what you think about a couple things we’ve been working on since you, ah, left,” she says brightly.

“I’m kind of out of practice with this stuff,” Ruben answers.

“Oh, I’m not asking you to solve it in an afternoon! But we’d sure appreciate any insights you got.”

This place takes all the fight out of him. He wants to say no and instead says “what’s the deal, then?”

Nothing familiar in the lab. Ruben isn’t part of the machine any more, he doesn’t know his way around. They talk about the results of projects he’d abandoned half-finished, of how they’ve progressed while he was gone. The world still turned without him. He just about understands what he’s being told, but the pauses where he’s supposed to interject and doesn’t are painfully obvious to everyone.

Is it scarier to think that they need something he’ll never be able to provide again, or to think that maybe they never needed him at all?

“So what do you think we should do?” Alice asks. Ruben hasn’t even been listening for the past few minutes.

The brain is physically altered by trauma, a mantra often repeated to himself. In the first few months he couldn’t think clear enough to even do math, now he can at least keep up with what they’re telling him, and this shit is far beyond high school level. That’s an improvement.

But it’s like straining to hear something just out of earshot, instinct telling him that if they’d asked about any of this stuff a year ago he’d have got it figured out within minutes. The harder he tries to grasp at it the further away it gets until he has to admit “I don’t know.”

“Oh,” says Alice, trying to cover her surprise. “Well, that’s fine, we’ve been working on it for weeks ourselves and still got nothing, wouldn’t expect you to have an answer after five minutes.”

That  _is_  what everyone had expected, though, isn’t it? Ruben’s supposed to always have the answer. Ruben isn’t supposed to be a disappointment, not here. Everywhere else, sure, but not here. He did impossible things here once.

“I should know this,” Ruben says, frustrated. He clenches his fists, nails digging into palms.

“You’re out of practice, like you said,” Dave says, looking at him with concern. “It’s really okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Ruben says, too loudly. A few heads turn to him, then quickly look away again. “It’s not okay at all, I should  _know_  this.”

“Hey—“ Dave takes a step towards him, Ruben shoots backwards until his back hits the table behind him.

“No,” he says. “Stay away from me.”

Here’s the closure he needed though it hurts when it hits: Ruben is nothing in this room. It’s Ruben, not Dr Marcado, who did all the work just to be able to walk through those doors this morning and nobody here will be able to see that. They’ll always just see Dr Marcado who can’t do the one thing he’s good for any more. Dr Marcado who fucked up more spectacularly than anyone could possibly imagine.

“Don’t touch me,” he says quietly even though nobody is trying to. In this building, it’s all he’s got left. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t—“

“Ruben,” a soft, sweet voice says from somewhere near the door. “Do you want to go and get a coffee with me?”

It’s Connie. Oh, thank god. They might never have been close but she’s safe presence. She was always kind to him, could have been a friend if Ruben knew how to be that to anyone. More importantly right now, she’s an escape route.

“Please,” he says, desperately, and forgets to even say goodbye to everyone else in his rush to get away.

“You looked like you needed rescuing,” Connie says as they walk down the corridor together.

Ruben nods with a forced smile, head down so he doesn’t have to see any of the staff double-take when they recognise him as he passes. Might be better to just head home, but there’s still the tiniest bit of defiance left: closure comes on Ruben’s terms, not Ian’s, not Jason’s. When he leaves Independence Memorial for the last time, he wants to walk away from it, not run scared.

If that’s even an option. In the hospital cafeteria the coffee machine grinds and hisses, there’s trays clattering and voices everywhere, and Ruben feels like he’s standing inside an avalanche. He keeps thinking he hears Jason, faint under the cacophony. He checks behind himself, once then twice then every few seconds. He keeps thinking he hears someone say his name.

“You drink lattes, right?” Connie asks. “…Ruben, did you hear me?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, whatever is fine.”

“Maybe we should take these outside,” she says. “Two lattes and we’ll have them to go, thanks.”

***

Safely on a bench in the parking lot, Ruben carefully takes the lid off his paper cup to blow over his drink, condensation of his breath mingling with the steam. His senses are winding down in the cold air and the comparative quiet. Connie looks off over the parking lot, squinting into the fall sun.

“I nearly went to work somewhere else afterwards,” she says in a distant sort of voice. “Once Dr Cole was arrested and it all came out, I thought about getting a new job.”

“Yeah?” he says. Looks like they’re actually gonna talk about it. A relief in it’s own way. Avoidance is a cognitive dissonance that makes him existentially uncomfortable: the way sometimes you stay mad at someone after dreaming that you fought with them, maybe everything he’s feeling is an emotional response to something that never actually happened. Even with the undeniable evidence, sometimes Ruben doubts his reality. External confirmation helps.

“It changed things for everyone in the lab, you know? You never imagine something like this happening where you— but hey, I guess I don’t need to tell  _you_  that.”

“Guess not.”

He’s too tired to struggle through finding anything else to say. There’s a spell of silence until Connie says “I get lunch with Josh a lot now.”

That gets Ruben’s attention. “Really? I didn’t know you two even knew each other.”

“The police came round asking everyone questions and nobody would tell us anything except that you were missing,” Connie says. “I figured Josh might have some more information. He’s the one who found out Dr Cole was on your plane, did you know?”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“And we just carried on hanging out after that,” she says. “He’ll be sorry to have missed you today.”

“Doubt it,” Ruben says. “Huh. I never imagined Josh to be the type of person tohang outwith anyone, to be honest.”

“He’s uptight but we get on pretty well. And I guess we both felt responsible for what happened to you. Nobody else really knew how that felt.”

Ruben frowns, baffled. “How could you possibly be responsible for it?”

“Josh says he’d thought there was something strange about you and Dr Cole for ages,” Connie says. “I’ve tried telling him everyone knew that, we just thought it was harmless, but he’s kinda stubborn. And I saw Dr Cole hurting you and told Dr Young everything because I thought…I thought maybe he’d been hurting you for a while. I knew there was something wrong that night you told me not to tell him I’d seen you and took all those days off work, you never stay away from the lab that long. I thought maybe you didn’t know how to get out of whatever it was by yourself.”

Ruben sighs. “Well, you weren’t wrong.”

“I didn’t do it to get you in trouble, I swear,” she says, tearfully. “I couldn’t just ignore what he’d done and it ended up making everything so much worse but they weren’t supposed to suspend you. They were supposed to  _help_  you.”

“I don’t blame you for it, Connie,” he says. “I don’t blame anyone except him and myself.”

That might be a lie, Ruben isn’t sure. No need to make her feel worse by saying it out loud. Connie gives a sad little shrug and doesn’t say anything. She’s not usually this sombre.

He takes a sip of his drink and makes a face. Even milk can’t hide the burnt flavor. “Ugh,  _god_ , I forgot how terrible the coffee is here.”

“Is it weird? Being back here again.”

Ruben nods. “Everything —“ he starts, and his voice catches. He clears his throat. “Everything reminds me of him.”

“You’re not coming back to work, are you?”

“No,” Ruben says, feels the lightness of freedom even through the heavy anxiety of the day. He’s been anchored down here too long.

“I’m gonna miss having you around,” she says. It’s the kind of thing people are always saying. Connie’s about the only one here Ruben might believe it from. “Where will you go next?”

“I don’t know. Not another lab, not yet. Somewhere out of state, I think. And I probably wont tell anyone here where it is.”

“Then I hope you find somewhere that makes you happier than this place did,” Connie says, and finally smiles at him. “And with better coffee.”

“We’ll see,” Ruben says.


	21. hacerlo oficial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [prompt: early trio, "there's no going back if we do this".]

“Pretty sure they already know,” Ruben says. “We weren’t subtle about leaving that party all of us together.”

“Dani gave me some very knowing looks the day after,” Vanessa agrees. “But we weren’t actually in a relationship then, and now we are. And it don’t count until it’s Facebook official.”

“Easiest way to tell everyone without having to have a biliion big conversations about it,” Usnavi adds. “We can just throw it out there and let people react however they want.”

“You’re the ones who’ll have to deal with all the notifications,” Ruben shrugs.

“Worth it.”  Usnavi picks up Vanessa’s laptop and logs into his Facebook account. He clicks around a bit then frowns. “Aw, what the fuck?! None of these fit us.”

“You mean they  _don’t_  have  _established couple plus some guy they banged_ on there?” Ruben asks. “I’m shocked. What’s the options?

“Me and Vanessa are already listed as in a relationship but it won’t let me put another person in there. Engaged, marred, civil partnership, domestic partnership…open relationship might be the closest?”

“We ain’t open,” Vanessa disagrees. “I dunno about you but I sure as hell don’t plan on adding anyone else any time soon, bed’s already pretty crowded. How about _it’s complicated_?

“Nothin’ complicated about it.  _We’re dating Ruben now,_ literally just four words.”

“Just put that in your actual status, then,” Ruben says. “Don’t let the drop-down list rule your life, Usnavi. I don’t know, you millenials and your Facebooks.”

“ _Uh_ , you don’t get to be high-and-mighty, the only reason you don’t have one is because your life is a legit nightmare of stalkers you need to avoid.”

“Wow,” Ruben says. “Devastating, but not inaccurate.”

“Okay then. Usnavi, shift it,” Vanessa says, shoving him to the side. “Ruben, get over here.”

With some fumbling rearranging they get Ruben into the middle of the couch. Vanessa gently pulls his rolled-up sleeves down then lifts her phone.

“Everyone look relationshippy on three,” she says. “One, two—“ and she kisses Ruben’s cheek as she snaps the picture. Usnavi’s doing the same on the other side. Ruben is mostly just looking surprised.

She types up a quick caption, shows it to the boys: “yeah?”

“I like it,” Usnavi says.

“Me too,” Ruben says. “But wait, let’s think this through, are you guys sure you want to put this out there to everyone you know? This is gonna have way more of an impact on you that it is on me and once you post this there’s no—“

“Already posted it while you were talking,” Vanessa says.

“We’re sure,” Usnavi says. “We’re all in.”

“Cool,” Ruben says, hiding his face behind his hands, but they can see the edges of his smile. “That’s cool.”

_Vanessa Garcia:  
they don’t have a preset status for it so here we go: this is ruben. he’s ours now. officially._


	22. día por enfermedad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [from a prompt for ruben/usnavi sickfic so here's some pre-UVR fluff, just a couple of useless bisexuals developing their friendship.]

When Ruben wakes up with a completely blocked nose and a sensation like all his bones have been encased in concrete, his first thought is not so much a word as it is a cartoon thought bubble with a sad raincloud in, largely because he also woke up feeing like his brain’s been switched out with an overstuffed pillow and he hasn’t fought through the fluff to access coherent sentences yet. He’s got a cold. It’s hard to describe why that thought brings a little sunburst of happiness over the raincloud, but it does.

The thing about a cold is, it’s a specific kind of feeling shit that everyone gets. Normal people get to wrap themselves in a blanket and mope around on the couch because they have the sniffles, not because their life has been smashed to pieces under them. Normal people take a couple of painkillers for a sinus headache, not because they’re more stitches than skin and the healing hurts. They call their mamas to complain about their itchy throat and hear comforting things about getting enough rest and looking after yourself, not like the other week on That Anniversary when Ruben had to stay on a call with her all day so that her voice could cut through his hallucinations for him.  

A cold sucks a normal amount. Ruben doesn’t get a lot of that.  

And since he doesn’t have a job yet, there’s not even any guilt making him drag his ass out for a twelve-hour lab shift like he used to. He can just stay home and watch baking shows in his pajamas and feel pathetic in a very  _temporary_  way. He’s actually looking forward to it, which probably  _isn’t_  how most people feel about being ill but there’s a limit to how normal he can be, and this is fine. Has he ever even taken a sick day in his adult life? Not that he can remember. Unless you count however long he’s been off since he got back to America, but that seems like calling a cold Friday in the Antarctic “a snow day”: semantically accurate, suitability debatable.

He takes his quilt and pillows off his bed to put on the couch in front of the TV, like Mama used to do for him when he was taking a day off school, then throws on a pair of sweatpants over his pajamas as a half-hearted attempt towards respectability before he leaves the apartment. If this is his first real sick day, he’s going to do it properly and well-medicated, which means heading out to the store for supplies: cold medicine and cough lozenges and tea and way more comfort food than he can probably justify.

“Looks like a hell of a party,” Usnavi observes when Ruben shoves it all on the counter “Feelin’ rough, buddy?”

“Yes,” Ruben says. and sneezes six times into the crook of his elbow. “Guhh. I’m sick.”

“Sure seems it,” Usnavi says, looking startled by the sneezes. “Here, have a tissue. You sure you’ve bought everything you need here? I got my phone, d’you want me to look up your symptoms for you and see if there’s anything else? Have you got a doctor in town yet? You should really make sure you do, just in case.“

“I know someone, yeah,” Ruben says. Okay, he’s talking about himself, but Usnavi doesn’t know that Ruben’s a doctor and it's not really lying. “It’s nothing serious, I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”

“You should still—“

“Don’t mind Usnavi,” Sonny says, with a suffering look at Ruben that conveys the stress of years of dealing with a fussy cousin. “He gets very nursey. I can’t even clear my throat near him any more in case he tackles me to the ground and WebMDs me to death.”

Usnavi shrugs happily like  _you got me_ and starts ringing Ruben’s items up. When he’s finished he waves him off, but not without calling “and get some sleep!” when Ruben’s at the door. Sonny yells “hope you feel better soon!”, and Ruben leaves the store smiling. That’s not unusual. Going to the bodega cheers him up, a little moment of successful smalltalking to start the day. Ruben’s not the sort to stand around conversing with cashiers because he’s unrelentingly bad at it, but he feels like he knows where he stands with Usnavi.

That sentiment is revised around noon when Ruben’s intercom makes an Unwanted Noise at him. Instinctively, he turns the TV off and hides under his quilt. If he’s very quiet and ignores it, they’ll go away. Shit, but he’s actually got a couple deliveries coming, because moving to a new city with just a suitcase means there’s endless amounts of things he doesn’t realize he doesn’t have until he desperately needs them, and if he doesn’t answer he’ll have to go to a sorting office and talk to a human and that sounds like a true nightmare. 

Besides, better to know now than later if someone far less welcome that the UPS guy knows where he lives.

Whatever he’s expecting to hear when he picks up on the second buzz, it’s definitely not Usnavi’s voice trilling out a chirpy “yo, it’s me! Hi! This  _is_  Ruben’s place right?”

“It…is, yes?” Ruben says.

“Ruben with the black coffee, cinnamon no sugar? You never actually told me your last name. Uh, it’s Usnavi, by the way. From the store? I wear a hat?”

“I know who you are, Usnavi. I’ll buzz you in.”

It’s an automatically polite response that Ruben immediately regrets, because he was enjoying his day of wallowing in mild self-pity and now he’s going to have to say words and be a person, who needs it, but too late now because Usnavi’s knocking on his door and chattering away the instant Ruben opens it.

“ _Man_ , am I glad I got the right apartment number, I was worried when you didn’t answer at first because it was totally a guess, I knew you were in this building and I remember before Noa left town she said she was subletting to guy moving in from Philly so I took a guess that you were in her old place but I wasn’t sure ‘cause its still her name on the label next to the buzzer, but then even if you changed it I wouldn’t know your last name anyway.”

He says it all in one breath, ending on a dazzling smile. Not even winded. Impressive.

“It’s Marcado,” Ruben says. He’s not sure anyone could fake the total lack of verbal filter Usnavi has, so if he was here for any nefarious purposes he probably would’ve accidentally told Ruben about it weeks ago, but it’s still sort of unsettling to have someone show up at your home when you had no idea they knew where you lived. In lieu of any appropriate reaction making itself apparent, Ruben blows his nose. “Do you…wanna come in, I guess? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I’m on lunch,” Usnavi says, coming in, and now Ruben notices he’s got a tupperware container in his hands “Usually I’d stay in the store but Sonny’s got it handled so I thought I’d come check in on you, see how you were doing. You still feeling shitty? You look kinda flushed, do you have a temperature?”

He secures the box between his hip and his right hand to reach out with his left, like he’s about to press it to Ruben’s forehead to check for a fever. Ruben very nearly makes a Marcado-shaped exit hole in the opposite wall of the hallway. Usnavi jolts backwards too, surprised at the sudden movement, then hastily says “oh, damn, I’m sorry, I shouldn’ta —“at the same time Ruben says “sorry, I didn’t mean to—“. They both pause to let each other talk for a beat too long to be comfortable, then simultaneously try to apologize again before falling into a shuffly, throat-clearing silence.

Well, this is agonizing.

“Sorry,” Usnavi says eventually.

“I don’t do touching,” Ruben says, still against the wall. “Lots of people don’t, so it’s not weird.”

“Never said it was.”

“I just don’t like it. Lots of people don’t.”

“Hey, it’s cool, I can respect that,” Usnavi says. ”Sorry, man, I don’t always think before I act. My bad. It won’t happen again.”

That’s all, just “no”, “okay I won’t”? That can’t be all. There’s always a catch. Ruben waits for it, but it doesn’t come, like the sudden end of a hiccuping fit: he doesn’t  _want_ it to happen again, but the gap where it should happen is an unfulfilled anticipation and he doesn't like it. There’s  _always_  something. “Why are you here?”

“Oh!” Usnavi holds up the tupperware container. “I brought soup! It’s chicken, no noodle because they go mushy when you recook ‘em but you can always add some if you got any. You only bought junk at the store - not that I got any room to judge another man’s snack habits - so I thought you should get something that’ll do you some good too.”

As if to prove Usnavi’s point, Ruben’s body chooses this time to hit him with a series of sneezes so intense that it makes him dizzy.

“Wrghl,” he says once it's over, to nobody in particular.

“Looks like I showed up just in time,” Usnavi says, eyebrows scrunching up. “You should sit down, if you tell me where your pans and shit are I can warm this up for —“

Ruben’s face must give away his feelings about some guy he barely knows rummaging around in his kitchen unsupervised (bad enough having someone in his stuff at all, never mind the room with the highest quantity of sharp objects _)_ , because Usnavi makes the kind of teeth-clenched wince face that you get watching someone faceplant the sidewalk in front of you and says “oh, mierda, I did it again, didn’t I? That’s a weird thing to do when you’re in someone’s house for the first time? Is it weird that I’m here? Vanessa says I can come on a little strong sometimes. Lo siento. How about we start this again: hi Ruben, I bought soup, end of sentence.”

He holds the tupperware out to Ruben, who stares down and doesn’t even think to take it just to be polite.

“…Why?” he asks.

Usnavi tilts his head, surprised. “S’just what anyone does, ain’t it? I know you live here by yourself and you don’t really know no-one in town yet, and it ain’t right leaving someone on their own when they’re sick and don’t got nobody to check up on them.”

“It’s just a little cold,” Ruben says. Usnavi’s really just here to check up on him? To be nice? A bunch of mental cogs try to turn in directions they aren’t accustomed to and make a confused crunching noise in his inner monologue.

“Yeah, well, Sonny wasn’t wrong, I do get nursey,” Usnavi says, ducking to hide under the brim of his cap then peeking out again with a slightly embarrassed grin. “Perils of bein’ friends with me.”

“But we’re not friends,” Ruben says and instantly realizes how rude that sounds when Usnavi’s face falls. “Ah, crap, no, I just meant…you didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me, you hardly know me.”

“Nobody don’t know no-one till you start getting to know them,” Usnavi says. Ruben decides not try to unpack that sentence. “F’rexample, I did this and now I know your full name is Ruben Marcado, great name, and that you have literally six thousand plants just in the entryway so I’m guessin’ you’re some kind of woodland sprite,  _that’s_  a fun fact to know, and you wear plaid jammies, very cute.  So I learn a few things out of this experience, you get a meal, everyone gets something and it ain’t much trouble to get a box out the freezer and walk three buildings down anyway. Except can you maybe take the box? It’s very cold and I been holding it longer than I wanted.”

“Do you always have emergency soup in the freezer for whenever a vague acquaintance has a cold?” Ruben take the frozen box, first pulling his sleeves down to cover his hands to minimize the chill which seeps through the fabric pretty quickly anyway.

“This is from the last time I got sick, Camila always makes way too much, not that I’m complainin’, it’s damn good stuff. Way better fresh but she’s gone to lunch with Dani today, I’ll get her to make you some later. Have you met Camila yet?”

“No, so don’t ask her to make soup for a total stranger, I don’t need people thinking I’m an entitled dick before they even know I exist.”

“Oh, Camila won’t mind, ‘specially not if I promise to help out choppin’ veg and whathaveyou,” Usnavi dismisses with carefree gesture. “Besides, she already knows who you are.”

“She does? How?”

“I told her about you,” Usnavi says, like it’s obvious that a random early-morning customer is in any way worth mentioning outside of work. “We can bring it over tomorrow when I’m done at the store and I’ll introduce you, it’s about time you started meetin’ folk other than me in our fine city. I mean, only if that’s cool with you, or am I just being a pain in the ass? You can tell me if you want me to not come back, I promise I won’t be offended.”

Having Usnavi in his apartment is like being visited by a very kind tornado. Ruben’s totally lost his footing, and for some reason isn’t nearly so distressed by this as he thinks he should be. In fact, he thinks he’s kind of enjoying himself? Which doesn’t make sense? All they’re doing is talking. Maybe it’s all the cold medicine addling his brain, which is probably also why he says “no, sure, come over again,” before he gets a grip and adds “uh, maybe some warning though? I don’t love unexpected visitors. No offence.”

Usnavi shakes his head, self-deprecating. “Batting a thousand here, ain’t I? First time you meet me I’m yellin’ my ass off enough to scare the crap out of you, and now I’m in your apartment puttin’ my hands all up on your face like you invited me. I’d say I’m usually less of a dork, but I think we’d both know I’m full of shit. Sorry I made things awkward.”

“I miiight forgive you,” Ruben says, “but only if the soup’s as good as you say it is. Do you…we could, um, we could exchange numbers? Maybe? Then you can let me know when you’ll be here tomorrow, or if you can’t make it, or. Y’know. If you wanna drop in some other time or whatever.”

“Ooooh!” Usnavi says, passing his phone to Ruben. “Exchanging numbers? Dropping in? Sounds like someone’s already giving in to the Power of Friendship. Oh, password’s one-eight-nine-two, that’s my birthday. There, now you learned something about me today too.”

“Yeah, I learned that you’re probably a prime candidate for identity theft, I hope you don’t use that for any of your other passwords,” Ruben says, tapping his details into Usnavi’s phone then calling himself from it to get Usnavi’s number before handing it back. “But seriously, this was really nice of you. Thank you. Really.“

Usnavi beams at him and says, “I better get back to the store. Make sure to eat all of that, okay?”

Fifteen minutes later, Ruben’s back on the couch with his hands wrapped around a steaming mug, and he’s thinking very hard about its contents. 

Camila, whoever she is, brings Usnavi this soup when he’s sick, enough that he has it going spare. Usnavi did the same for Ruben. Ruben’s got no point of comparison, but is this how normal sick days work: someone other than your mom caring about how you are, checking in, filling in the little gaps where you forget to take care of yourself with real meals or sleep or kindness? Usnavi says that’s just what you do for people, that it’s what he does for his friends. Is  _this_  how normal friendships work?

Ruben doesn’t get a lot of that. Seems too good to be true. He wouldn’t mind knowing more.


	23. y después otra vez

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anon requested some UVR porn to cheer them up, and im deeply in some early 90verse nostalgia right now, so here’s a fluffy little morning fooling around the day after their first time. direct continuation of chapter one of this very fic, oh so very long ago.

“Fucking finally,” Vanessa says as Usnavi hurries on a coffee-mission out the room still butt-ass naked. “He woke me up like an hour ago just to entertain him because he was ‘too hype to get back to sleep’ but he didn’t wanna move you. It was hell. He’s lucky I like him so much, for some godforsaken reason.”

Ruben bites his lip to keep a neutral expression. “Sorry. I can’t help but feel like that was partially my fault.”

“It was completely your fault,” she corrects. “You’re lucky I like you too.”

She yawns, and rests her head on her arm, looking at him. She has the cutest nose Ruben’s ever seen. He wants to kiss it. Warily, because he doesn’t know what he’s really allowed to do or if there’s some rule where a girl can finger-bang a guy who just ate her out and that’s all thoroughly casual but nose-booping is crossing a line of intimacy, he gives in to the urge.

Vanessa smiles drowsily at him and says, “well, ain’t you sweet?”

“Hynanrhgh,” Ruben says: Vanessa is _extremely_ hot and she said a nice thing at him, and he is powerless against that kind of attack.

It's quiet until a growing-louder beatboxed drumroll rises as Usnavi comes back, announcing himself outside the room: “señores y señoritas, he’s back, the one, the only —“ he kicks the door open, nearly spilling all three coffees on the tray he’s holding but saving it at the last second “—yo, it’s Usnavi.”

He sets the tray down on the beside table, falls back into bed with an unnecessarily disruptive amount of bounce, then big-spoons around Ruben with his chin on Ruben’s shoulder to peek at Vanessa and say “hey girrrl, it’s me, coffee boyfriend.”

Vanessa starts laughing. “Holy shit. When you’re both right next to each other like that, it’s like…makin’ a Sims character, you know, with the sliders? Like I started off with the same guy but do I want him to be twink, or cub?” She closes first one eye then the other so she alternates which one of them she's looking at.“Twink, cub. Twink, cub. Tw--"

“I ain’t a twink,” Usnavi says. He wriggles his arm free so that he can flex at them. “I am gruff and strong!”

“ _Aww_ ,” Ruben says.

“Honey,” Vanessa says, patting Usnavi’s bicep condescendingly.

Usnavi flops his arm down over both of them in protest. “What?! To hell with both of yous, I ain’t talking to you no more.”

“Good,” Vanessa says. “That was my plan this whole time.”

The silence that follows is close and peaceful. Ruben’s never really thought until now about how it can be to just touch someone, the way a leg can press against yours incidentally, the way a hand can feel casually dropped on you, the warmth of life on either side of you. Nice is such a small word for it but nice is what it is. It’s nothing complicated and twisting and brutal, no guilt-wrenched desire, no secret shame about the content of his thoughts. Right now his only thoughts are _coffee :)_ and _Usnavi :)_ and _Vanessa :)_ and even a very quiet and tentative _Ruben :)?,_ in comforting pastel colors like a cartoon for kindergarteners. It feels like he’ll never feel bad again, because how will he ever have space to think about anything other than every second of what happened since Usnavi kissed him last night?

That’s so crazy. It’s so crazy how that actually happened.

He says out loud, “you kissed me last night.”

“There was some other stuff too,” Vanessa says. “Keep up, Ruben.”

“It was nice,” he says. 

“I’ll do it again,” Usnavi says, shaking a fist at him. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Prove it.”

“I will!”

Usnavi messily launches himself at Ruben’s face and attaches like a leech, then quickly sinks into something sweet and deep and real. Ruben thinks about all the things their mouths were doing last night and quietly tries not to die about it. His brain makes notes like observing the conditions in a test environment: soft, check. Scratchy, check, Usnavi’s definitely gonna leave him with stubble-rash all round his mouth but it’s worth it. Tongue, very much check. Awesome, _check_. Vanessa, not check, even when she leans in and Usnavi reaches across Ruben to pull her even closer **.**

“Oh, I was actually just tryna reach my coffee,” she says. Usnavi breaks the kiss to grin at her, pets Ruben’s beard and sits up so he can hand the mugs out.

“Caffeine now, makeouts later, then,” he says. “Vanessa con leche, Ruben sin leche, my two little cinnamon buddies.” 

“Better than kissing anyway,” Ruben says. He’s kidding, but then he takes a sip and maybe it’s the fact he’s drinking it out of a real mug instead of the bodega's paper ones, or maybe just the whole context is making everything elevated, but it might be the best thing he's ever tasted. He sighs, loudly and blissfully. “Jesus  _Christ_ , Usnavi, you’re fucking magical.”

“Oh, it’s nice to be appreciated for once,” Usnavi says, poking Vanessa, who slaps his hand then lifts the sheets and ducks her head under them. “The hell are you doing, you weirdo?”

Vanessa re-emerges, her hair ruffled up. “I was checking to see if Ruben’s poppin’ a coffee boner. That was an R-rated moan right there.”

Ruben blushes and tugs the sheets more securely over himself. “It was a _sigh_ , not a moan. And I’m not. Y’know. Doing that.”

“Is he, though, Vanessa?” Usnavi asks, and seems genuinely disappointed when she shakes her head. “Aww, bummer. Ruben, tell your junk to join the party, your brand new bisexual here’s got lost time and lost dicks to make up for.”

“Maybe later,” Ruben says. “Caffeine first, we all agreed."

“Oh, sure, sure,” Usnavi says, taking a long drink from his own mug then hooking his leg ever-so-casually over Ruben’s, sliding his foot gently up then down Ruben’s calf. “I’m patient.”

This is fine. Ruben is stronger than this. “You’re _distracting_."

“I know.”

“Let him alone, Usnavi,” Vanessa says, then _instantly_ betrays Ruben by laying her hand just under his navel, scritching her fingers lightly. Ruben gives a startled cheeping noise like a baby bird and then looks very closely into his mug hoping that if he can’t see them that means they can’t give him shit for it.

“I am very busy right now,” he says into his mug. He gets two thirds of the way through with Usnavi’s thigh against his and Vanessa’s hand on his belly and an insistently stirring interest somewhere in between those two places before his willpower caves in. “Okay, alright, caffeine over.”

“Alriiight,” Usnavi says, taking Ruben and Vanessa’s empty mugs to put down, then sitting up eagerly in a cross-legged position that looks far more like he’s waiting for them to tell him a story than anything else. "Ruben to the stage, can we get Ruben Marcado to the stage, please."

“Show us what you got, babe,” Vanessa says, a spark in her voice like the flint on a lighter. If Ruben's taking stage then he feels like he’s been shoved out here before he’s even had time to read the script. He’s both far too knowledgeable and far too inexperienced to know whether he knows what she’s hinting at, other than maybe their conversation earlier. Lying back against the pillows with his eyes closed in faint embarrassment, he hopes he guessed right, and takes his own semi-hard dick in hand, with a few nervous slow strokes. Vanessa's fingers work their way into his hair and she kisses lightly at his jaw.

“ _Shit_ , yeah,” Usnavi says. The bed shifts and then Usnavi’s left arm brushes against Ruben’s right, idly rhythmic as he joins in. “That’s a real good look on you, my dude.”

They like what they see. That's a fucking insane thing, but the thing in Ruben's heart that leaps at the idea of being wanted, being desired, instantly responds in an overdrive, fast pulse rushing through his whole body, and he moves his hand with more certainty or more need or just more, in general, than he ever really knew was possible. 

Vanessa presses into Ruben’s side, mouth to his shoulder and her breasts against him - holy crap, open your eyes and reality check for a fucking moment, Marcado: he’s spent all night _naked_ with this woman, and just _look_ at her. She’s gorgeous and clothesless and utterly fearless in herself, sucking her index and middle finger as she meets his stare. There’s a look on her face like she’s laughing at what is probably a sudden and violently vacant expression on Ruben’s, and then takes her fingers out her mouth and pushes them both inside herself, eye contact unbroken. Usnavi whispers several creative swear words, his arm moving faster next to Ruben’s so that Ruben instinctively matches the speed. Vanessa’s breath is loud and unsteady very close to his ear, the dark strands of her long hair fanned and lightly tangled over his chest.

_Look at this, just me and a friend and another friend all jerking off together on a Sunday morning,_  Ruben thinks. Somehow even his internal monologue manages to sound shrill, ringing with a happy kind of panic.  Surely he should be jaded to something as simple as this: Ruben’s imagined plenty of things in his time, from mildly kinky to the kind of shit he should probably either tell a therapist or never say out loud to another human ever, but what they're doing is somehow hotter than anything he could have thought of. Has he ever just imagined how barely touching someone else while they all chase their own gratification together could feel like so much?Did he ever get off on the idea of lying there, the soft feeling of someone panting against his skin, contented in the middle of the frustrating delight of rising sensation? How long’s it been since he thought of sex as such a simple pleasure as this? 

Need passes between them like a current being transmitted. Vanessa, stopping to catch her breath with her fingertips falling to rest against Ruben’s thigh and he can feel that they’re wet. The realisation is a tug in his belly that he rolls up into, which makes Usnavi gasp and quietly mutter “fuck, Ruben, you’re hot as hell,” the kind of thing that Ruben could probably never say without sounding stupid but it sounds so right on Usnavi. it sounds right to have Vanessa cooing encouragement low-voiced while she rides her own fingers, telling him to come for them, the rasp in the vowels when she calls him _baby_  perfect on her. It even sounds right to hear his own voice, guttural groaning something between a moan and “ _yeah”_ , palm of his other hand pressed over the head as he spills out into slow satisfaction.

Vanessa kisses him immediately like it’s a reward for finishing, then falls against him with most of her weight to get off with her hand pressed between herself and Ruben’s thigh, her hip sliding against the damp patch on his belly. He lets her nip quick fierce kisses like stings against his mouth, replies with a gentle one between her eyebrows where she's holding a tight look of needy, almost furious focus to feel it ease out under his lips, and then holds her against him with both arms and one leg while he turns to Usnavi, who says “well, damn, I could watch that forever.” 

Ruben could watch _this_ forever. He takes in all the things he missed because of the position last night, Usnavi's faintly startled look of desire, the way Usnavi’s body fits itself with sharp angles and slender fingers. The way Usnavi touches himself, rolls the foreskin down to work the thumb under the head, grip tight while his other hand lightly dances elegant, over his chest then down to his balls with a gentle squeeze that makes him hum in pleasure. _There’s a guy who definitely knows how he likes it_ , Ruben thinks, holding off a smile.

“Someone’s obviously had a lot of practice at this,” he murmurs to Vanessa, who giggles into his shoulder.

“Hey, fuck you, pal,” Usnavi says breathily. “C’mere.”

Vanessa shifts her weight off his arm. Ruben reaches down to curl his fingers over the hand Usnavi’s jerking off with, moving it for him faster and faster until finally Usnavi makes a deep, resonant noise in the back of his throat and hides his face behind his arm, shuddering. 

“Damn,” he sighs, wiping his hand off on the sheets. “Like, god _damn_. Good fucking morning. Vanessa, where’s my lady at? Get here.”

“I got you, baby,” she says, holding out her arm to Usnavi. They cuddle each other with Ruben, between them and the most he's ever been touched his whole life til now, the same place he spent all night. He holds out in the happy glow as long as possible but some things you can only ignore for a certain amount of time, so he reluctantly says “I’m pretty sure you’re both going to be stuck to me forever if we don’t clean up soon.”

“On it,” Usnavi says, disentangling himself and taking a packet of baby wipes from the top drawer. “I always come prepared. Literally.”

“Thank god, else that could have been a _sticky_ situation,” Ruben says. Usnavi does a finger-gun of approval.

“I’m cancelling this conversation,” Vanessa says. “Or you guys can carry on punning while I get first shower.”

“You’re not allowed first shower, you take forever,” Usnavi complains, flapping a baby wipe at her. “You want to shower here or waiting till you get home, Ruben?”

Oh. Right. Home. There’s reality to deal with here.

“What happens when I go home?” Ruben says quietly, instead of answering the question.

“I dunno, I’ll probably kick around til lunch then go take over at the store,” Usnavi says. 

“No, I meant. What _happens_? We have to think about consequences now, don’t we?” Ruben cleans his fingers off one more time and crumples the wipe up in his fist. “Like, when I come into the store tomorrow, who am I talking to? Are you gonna be Usnavi who fucked me last night or Usnavi my friend at the bodega or Just Some Guy Who Makes My Coffee? Is this Vanessa who I’ve just watched, y'know, or Vanessa who I hang out with platonically or Coffee Guy’s Not-Coffee Girlfriend now?”

“Could be all three?” Usnavi suggests.

“I’m definitely not just The Not-Coffee Girlfriend, thanks,” Vanessa objects. Ruben makes an apologetic face at her, because that’s not how he meant it, and she inclines her head in acceptance. “All of them is good, though. Could be something else, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like…Usnavi and Vanessa who fucked you last night and wanna do it again some time. Regularly.”

“Usnavi and Vanessa who like this bit too, not just the sex,” Usnavi adds. “With the morning, and the hanging out, and the cuddling.”

“Could be like, Usnavi and Vanessa and Ruben, maybe,” Vanessa says, giving Ruben a look that on anyone else he would have called shy.

“Usnavi and Ruben and Vanessa,” Usnavi corrects her.

“What’s the difference?”

“Letters balance out nicer. Got the u- sounds on one side and the -en -an sounds on the other, and me and Vanessa make it esses at either end, and the vees are more evenly spaced. Trust me, I’m right. Hey, ain’t it awesome that we all have so many sounds in common? Like, it wouldn’t work at all if Ruben was called…fuckin’, Eric or something.”

“Usnavi and Eric and Vanessa?” Vanessa tests. “Wow, you're right, I _hate_ that. God, get your shit together, Eric.”

“Fuckin’ _Eric.”_

Ruben tosses the tissue over to the side table, too preoccupied to care about throwing it out properly or to join in with the patter. “To be clear, do you mean…dating?” he asks, feeling himself burn up with embarrassment like it's a totally unrealistic conclusion to come to. Dating. Ruben. Them. Should it seem less impossible considering what's all just happened? It doesn't seem less impossible.

“Maybe,” Vanessa says with a shrug. “Or like, whatever.”

“Don’t take Vanessa’s total inability to say anything genuine the wrong way, we totally mean dating,” Usnavi says. “Last night, all that, it wasn’t just out of the blue.”

Ruben raises a hand. “Beg to differ.”

Vanessa laughs. “Okay, I guess it was to you, though I don’t know how you missed Usnavi walkin’ around with hearts falling out of his eyeballs at you for the past however long.” She catches Ruben’s hand as he drops it back down and links her fingers through his. “We both really like you. We’re pretty sure you like us. We’ve already talked a _lot_ about what it means for mine and Usnavi’s relationship, and we agreed that we want this, if you do.”

“Vanessa, I don’t know _how_ to want this,” Ruben says quietly. “You have to understand, this is _so_  far beyond untrodden ground for me. This time a year ago I'd be having a sceraming fucking breakdown if anyone so much as looked at me and suddenly we've just...and I'm here, with all this," he holds out both his scarred arms. "And you've seen it and you've seen me and this is where you say you want it to go? You've talked about it but that doesn't mean it's the same when you live it, and I’ve never done this, nothing even close to it. Dating was hard enough for me before and now— and I don’t know how to be what you want me to be. I don't even know what that is.”

“We don’t want you to try and be anything,” Usnavi says. “Just, y’know, Ruben it up, that’s plenty good enough.”

“That’s new too,” Ruben murmurs. Habit says _you aren’t allowed this_. But _god_ , Ruben’s never felt like this before, none of his failed dates or screwed-up crushes ever got close. That must mean something, right? And it’s so obvious how much Vanessa and Usnavi love each other, even more obvious now that he’s witnessed them so privately. Would they really risk that just for a quick fuck with the world’s most fucked-up guy? There’s way better options to spice up a sex life, and even Ruben’s paranoia can’t work itself into believing that it’s all some kind of long-con. He doesn't see any cracks in their kindness where cruelty hidden underneath pokes through, and besides, why bother,  when he has nothing they want.

Except maybe himself, just him. That’s new. That’s new. That’s very new.

“It’s definitely not a no,” he decides, finally.

“¡Wepa!” Vanessa whoops. Usnavi drums his heels quickly against the bed in an excited beat. 

“Hold on, that’s not a yes either,” Ruben reminds them, but the burst of _something_ he got just from their split-second of happiness - _Ruben_ made them feel like that! - pretty much makes the end result inevitable, doesn’t it? And his name does sounds right, sitting right there in the middle of the other two Usnavi-Ruben-Vanessa, or any way he puts them together. “I guess it’s a _not yet_.”

“However long you need,” Vanessa says, beaming at him, a rare dorky grin like the one he saw last night. The tip of her tongue sticks out a little between her front teeth when she does it, and her face goes all squished up.Didn’t Ruben find her intimidating once? What the hell was he thinking? She’s _adorable_. “This shit’s difficult. I get it.”

“No pressure at all,” Usnavi agrees. “Uh, in the least pressure way possible, just so I know where I stand vis-a-vis places I can put my face, is making out off the table during the _not yet?_ Because I can _totally_ not get my tongue all up in you if you need space, but if you’re down then I for sure want to know.”

“Interesting way to phrase it,” Ruben says. Kissing is good. Might bias the outcome of his consideration period? Might make everything even more confusing than it already is? Kissing is _very_ good, though. “Yeah. No, definitely you should feel free to get your tongue all up in me.”

“Rad,” Usnavi says, and does exactly that.

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: please leave a comment if you liked it! i am very easily encouraged by feedback so it's a surefire way to get me to write more. or come talk to me on [ tumblr.](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/)


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